| Alan Merrill |
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| Joined: 22 Feb 2004 |
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Once upon a time there was a band called the Left Banke.
I auditioned for the band in the spring of 1968 at a cattle call of about 50 people, all with hope in their hearts and guitars in hand. I found out about the auditions in the Village Voice, a New York weekly newspaper. It came down to two people at the end of the gruelling try outs. Bob (then known as Robbie) Kulick, and myself. Ironically Bob and I would play in the group Meat Loaf together a couple of decades later.
It was around the time the Left Banke released their 1968 single "Dark Is The Bark."
The Left Banke's managers Roger Rubenstein and Billy Ottenger, (bass player) Tom Finn and (drummer) George Cameron picked me out of the bunch in a tiny rehearsal room in midtown Manhattan. I had an edge over Kulick because I was good at singing harmonies, an ingredient essential to the Left Banke sound. I can remember Tom Finn asking me to sing a one note harmony part that was used on their massive hit single "Walk Away Renee." We did it in the key of A and my note was an E all the way through the chorus.
Afterwards, I went to give a lesson to my guitar student Tony Sales that same day following the Left Banke audition. When I got there Tony was sitting on the king sized bed in his room with his girlfriend, young actress Nancy Allen. They were both very happy for me on hearing the news, jumping up and down on the bed and shouting "yippie." At the time the Left Banke were still a very important band. It was a rather big deal. What the band and the management hadn't told me is that they were not yet decided whether or not to fire the current guitarist, Rick Brand. Ah, the intrigue!
What they told me was that Rick had been arrested for possession of marijuana and they needed to replace him. This was a half truth, I would learn many years later. I rehearsed with Tom Finn at the Bryant Hotel and learned their new single "Dark Is The Bark" and the b-side "My Friend Today," two very sophistcated songs from a musical standpoint. The songs were leaning more to the jazz rock genre than the the band's trademark baroque rock approach in fact.
In a few days I knew the entire first album by the band, and some newer things written by Tom Feher that had been tailored for the group.
Steve Martin (the Left Banke's singer, not the comedian) was distant all the time. He seemed a snob, very good looking and self assured. He had a great voice, I knew that. He had all the confidence and cockiness that goes with the mix of extreme good looks and young celebrity.
I was never quite told that I didn't have the Left Banke job, but never told that I did either. In fact, there was no real "job". No money ever changed hands. It was really just a series of free rehearsals I did with them at the Bryant Hotel. Then I was told that one of the managers, Roger Rubenstein, was being drafted into the army. It was pure chaos, and that was the only truth about the situation that was the Left Banke in 1968.
The managers simply were not managing.
I got close enough to the Left Banke in those few short weeks to understand how a band so talented and gifted could be stalled and stagnant. It was a mess, top to bottom. The whole lot of them mad as canaries.
I went up to the office with the bold notion of demanding answers. When I got there, guitarist Rick Brand was standing in the hallway outside of Billy Ottenger's office, his back to me. They were talking. Billy saw me and nodded to acknowledge that he had seen me, but he looked very nervous. I waited a while listening, trying to stay calm.
Listening to their conversation, I understood that Rick was clueless about the auditions, and he rightly assumed he was still in the band given no one had told him otherwise. I knew right then that I had been deceived by the lot of them, and so had he.
I was furious. I stormed out of the offices and gathered my composure. I didn't want to make a scene in front of Brand. It was clear to me he didn't know there'd been auditions to replace him.
When I got home I called the manager named Ottenger, and asked him what he was playing at. He lamely replied that the band were breaking up. He said he was sorry, and that was the end of it.
The Left Banke mess is clearly a case of the blind leading the blind, but at 17 years of age I was was pretty upset with them playing with me like a cat plays with catnip. But how could I have known they were all certifiably insane? To me they were successful, so I thought they must be professional. That was not the case, at least not in their dealings with me.
They never replaced Rick Brand, carrying on to do the 1968 album "Left Banke Too" as a vocal trio without him, augmented in the studio by session players. The album is a really fine work, but was their last significant release as a band by music industry standards.
The Left Banke trio, 1968-
http://the-aleecat.com/3PcLeftBanke.jpg
In the end I was so disgusted with the Left Banke that I decided to leave New York entirely in the summer of 1968, and I relocated to Tokyo, Japan.
It was a decision that would change my life in a very positive way.
Japan seemed just about far enough. New York seemed grey and held no promise, at least in my teen-angst mindset.
As the Left Banke were losing momentum in their career, I was just getting started in mine. By the winter of 1968, I was in a chart hit band in Japan called The Lead, with a hit single titled "Aoi Bara" on RCA Victor records.
In 1969 I went solo and had a successful run as a Japan based, domestic market pop star / teen idol. The first Tokyo resident foreign rock star in Japan's history in fact. I had left the Left Banke behind me, and buried my anger about what had happened.
By coincidence, about two or three years later I was invited by a friend to Tom and Margret Finn's newly opened ice cream parlour on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Tom Finn had become the proprietor of this popular and trendy place. I was on holiday from my work in Japan, visiting relatives and friends in New York.
Finn's then wife Margaret greeted me warmly when I walked in, remembering me from my rehearsals with Finn at the Bryant Hotel a few years prior. Tom Finn however looked down his nose at me, and with a flip arrogance said, nearly sneering, "I thought you went to Japan."
I replied "I did, I'm signed as a solo artist with Atlantic records there."
He looked shocked and speechless. I was pleased.
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* This entry already appeared in part some months ago on writer Dawn Eden's website. We thank her for printing it first on her site.
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Post script :
In recent years I have renewed my friendship with several members of the original Left Banke lineup, Tom Finn and George Cameron. We laugh about the old days now, and all our ancient miscommunication is now happily resolved.
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Charlie Cazalet, George Cameron, Alan Merrill - May 2006.
http://www.alanmerrill.com/photos/00-02/0_CazCamMer%5B1%5D.jpg
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The Left Banke circa 1966
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_FKxj7S66vU4/SFDYOU0IvGI/AAAAAAAAAYs/QydPYzQ5wps/s400/left%2Bbanke
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