 |
The classic, 1972 Fender Deluxe Reverb
|
We pulled up to the house about
an hour early, right on time to setup before the reception. It was a
long drive from Santa Monica to some place in South Pasadena, in 1972 an unincorporated part of L.A.
Henry pulled his van into the long driveway and got ready to unload his drums. Marco walked up to the house to make sure we had the right place. I took
hold of my bass amplifier, stood and waited for Marco to give the sign, a nod
and a smile. Yes, we had the right place.
It was a handsome ranch-style house, manicured front lawn and shrubs, plenty of trees, just like the others in the neighborhood, mountains in the background, solidly middle-class, maybe a businessman, doctor, or lawyer's home.
A woman showed us to the backyard. We walked past the swimming pool to a covered patio, large enough for a three-piece rock band. We already had a steady gig as a house band in a good-size club and hoped we’d outgrown the birthday party and marriage reception
circuit, but when anybody offered a hefty sum of money to play for a few hours and still make it back to the Westside to be on stage by 9:00 P.M., we were in.
Our trio was pretty "tight," musically, and experienced. We'd paid our dues at dive bars, strip joints, once even a bottomless bar in the San Fernando Valley. We'd entertained college students during their breaks between classes and done way too many house parties to recall, more than once scrunched into a corner of a small living room, bodies right on top of us, in some cases, literally.
We'd played in Beverly Hills mansions, where the kids ruled, marijuana wafted in the air, and parents hid in their rooms, drinking martinis, coming out only to give us our pay. We'd shared the stage with Sumo wrestlers, Chinese acrobats, and Japanese puppeteers. We'd seen aberrant behavior and violence in places one would never have expected, and no race or ethnicity free of life's absurdities, but we played on, hoping to one day hit the big time.
It usually took us an hour to setup, Henry's the most tedious job. We made multiple trips to get all his stuff from the van, so he could start unzipping the covers and removing pieces, the snare, metal stands, two tom-toms, cymbals, the bass drum, foot pedals, and finally the high hat,
a clapping metal device, in the hands of a master like Henry, barely out of his teens, and crucial to carrying
the beat, really the band's backbone.
Watching him put it all together was like
watching a kid set up Legos, making sure each piece fit, the wingnuts
tightened, the screws snug, just so, then adjusting the cymbals to get the
right ring, and, lastly, sitting on his stool and moving everything around, an inch
here, an inch there, getting the distance exact for his six-foot frame, an anomaly
for a young Mexican kid from Venice.
While Henry assembled his drum kit, I lugged
out my bass speaker cabinet, six, twelve-inch JBL speakers, powered by a
hundred-plus watt amp head, for sure way too loud for most house parties but
perfect for night clubs crowded with hundreds of bodies in all states of
intoxication and exaltation, the walls pulsating like a small earthquake from
each note of my Fender Precision bass.
Marco, the lead guitar and vocals, had the easiest job, a Fender Deluxe
Reverb amplifier in one hand and his Gibson 335 in the other, shouldering a bag
filled with guitar cables, extension cords, and power strips
with multiple outlets, and a stack of extra guitar strings. We each carried our own microphone and stand.
Once Henry finished negotiating the
business with his drum set, Marco and I situated our amplifiers to the rear,
angling them to where they would cover the best hearing radius for the venue,
in this case a large outdoor space, wide grass area, swimming pool, and shrubs
and trees, good for the acoustics but always tricky under the open sky. Finally, we set up the P.A. system, the two tall Shure speaker cabinets,
amplifier, and microphones, cords everywhere, but an important component in a trio where every voice counted, sharing lead and backup vocals, mixing in plenty
of complex harmonies.
In those days, we didn’t have monitors facing us to hear our own
voices, so it was crucial we manipulated all the speakers, so the music didn’t
overpower the vocals. It was hard enough to hear our voices with the guitar amps nearly stuck in our ears. Usually, by the end of a gig, much of our hearing was as if
we’d been flying in a jet at extreme altitudes. We never considered the long-term effects on our hearing, never even crossed our minds.
We started the first song right when the
clock hit the top of the hour, played 45-minutes, took a fifteen-minute break, and started up again, usually about three-hours of music, sometimes four, depending on the conditions worked out beforehand, usually over the phone, no written contracts. Often, when things went well, which they usually did, they’d ask us to play longer, which was okay, when we didn't have a club full of people waiting for us. Though, we had day jobs and played in a dance club on weekends, the extra money always helped. Our dream was to perform enough, so we could quit our day jobs, which was usually a pipe dream for most bands, no matter how many years they performed.
The wedding party hadn’t yet arrived, but the guests began trickling in, the tables and chairs around the pool the first to fill. We knew nobody was ready to dance, not until
more people arrived, or until they downed enough booze to fuel themselves and raise their confidence. Marco came from
a musical family. His dad had played on the radio in the 1930s and his older brother on the Sunset Strip in the early '60s, Gazzarri's to be exact. He even landed a record deal, but booze and a car accident ended his career and forced him to sit on a stool, in small lounges, backed by a drum machine, where he played the old standards to dinner crowds.
They taught Marco some instrumentals by Sergio Mendez and Wes
Montgomery, cumbias, norteñas, and a couple of tunes by crooners, like Sinatra and Martin, which we opened to warm-up our voices and fingers, not too different than athletes exercising before the
game. The Beach Boy’s “Sloop John B.,” in calypso style, and Harry Belafonte’s,
the “Banana Boat Song,” were always crowd pleasers, and often a surprise coming from a rock
band, infused with rhythm and blues.
The wedding party arrived late, in the middle of
our second set, the bride and groom, still in their wedding attire,
standing at the back door and waving to everyone, the king and queen acknowledging their subjects. It looked like most of the
guests were relatives and friends, some guys, drinks in hand, laughing and slapping each
other on the back, the laughs and slaps getting louder and harder with each drink.
We had to get on with the show. The bride and groom came out for their dance. Since they hadn't requested any particular song, Marco said we should play “Angel Baby,” our modernized version, which
never failed to satisfy and get people off their seats and onto their feet. Sure enough, from the first iconic four notes from Marco’s 335, people got up to dance. The bride waved them all onto the patio, breaking with tradition, where only the new couple danced. Henry called Rosie's song, the "Chicano National Anthem." By the end of the song, the dance floor, or cement, in this case, was crowded. Rosie and the Originals never failed us.
The married couple excused themselves and went back into the house, to change clothes I assumed. We didn’t want the crowd sitting back down, so Marco started in with “You’re Still a Young Man.” Henry and I took up the background vocals and harmonies. The people packed onto the patio, the swimming pool's blue water glittering in the afternoon sunlight. By the middle of the second set, most of the men were "toasted," their ties hanging crooked, their coats off, shirts sweaty, laughter heartier and backslaps harder, but they danced on. We hit them with Credence, “Born on the Bayou,” the Spinners “I’ll Be Around,”
and Malo’s “Nena.” We had them in the palms of our hands. They danced
to whatever we played, even the Doors “Love Me Two Times.”
We fed off of the
crowd, the energy in the air contagious, but we needed a break, so Marco played
the last notes to the Porky Pig theme song and announced, “We’ll be White Black.” Like always, a few single women came up to us, friendly but scoping us out. Once they found out Marco and I were married, the homed in on Henry, who dug the attention. I had my eyes on a couple of guys, who looked like relatives or close friends. They'd been hitting the bar heavily, hugging each other, and
laughing, that drunk’s laugh, not really a laugh, more a roar, showing off.
I’m
not exactly sure how it happened, but in a flash, one guy was in the pool, his wedding
clothes, shoes, everything. People weren't sure whether to laugh or not. He didn't look happy as he reached up to take the hand of the man who pushed him into the pool. The next things we knew was both men were in the pool. Another guy was laughing so hard, he didn't feel it as someone nudged him into the pool. When the men came out soaking, somebody cursed, and somebody else hit the water. It was a free-for-all,
everybody pushing everybody into the pool but no more laughing. Somebody started throwing blows. The women yelled at the
drunkards, trying to get them to stop. It was out of hand and in no way was
about to stop anytime soon.
Marco said whatever was happening wasn’t good. He said we should pack up and leave.
“You get our money,” Henry asked?
“Yeah, up
front,” said Marco, as we packed our stuff, not the usual way, keeping
everything coordinated and organized. We started shoving our things into
bags and rolling our amplifiers to Henry’s van, jumping in just as three sheriff’s
cars pulled to the curb, across the street from the reception.
We knew about sheriffs. They didn't mess around, not like the LAPD, who, where we came from, usually preferred negotiation before confrontation. The sheriffs thrived on confrontation, knocking in heads. The
sheriff’s, big, beefy, White guys, exited their cars, but instead of doing
anything, they leaned against their cars, crossed their arms, and started
laughing at the melee, pointing to two guys, in their best wedding garb, duking it out in the driveway, screams and yells coming from the backyard, a real madhouse. Just then, the bride, still in full
wedding regalia, rushed through the front door onto the porch. She yelled at the
sheriff’s, “You bastards. Do something!”
That was it. One deputy charged at her. The
other deputies headed toward the backyard, rushing right past the men fighting.
Next thing, they got the bride handcuffed, her arms behind her. The neighbors
are on the sidewalk to watch. I could hear screams coming from inside the house. One deputy unholstered his club and started clobbering
guys. Another sheriff came through the front door, pushing an old couple,
the bride’s parents, their wrists in handcuffs. We could hear kids crying inside the house. It was no longer funny. Guys were
bleeding. More sheriff cars arrived. The bride was in tears, her whole body shaking as the sheriff threw her into the back seat, alongside her new husband.
One sheriff turned our way. Before he
could say anything to us, Henry hit the accelerator, and we were gone, our
equipment rattling in the back of the van, creating weird song, the beat completely off
tempo but nothing we hadn't heard before.
