Excerpts from “A Gathering of Promises” by Ben Graham
(Zero Books, 2015)
Back in Houston, the action was
already shifting away
from La Maison to the Catacombs, which opened at the beginning of 1966
at 3003
South Post Oak Road. Although the
dress
code specified "school
clothing," the Catacombs was a pretty hip space,
with low ceilings and black wall painted
in
fluorescent designs, and two rooms with
a stage in each. Support bands would play
in the back room, then
the headline act would start immediately afterwards on the main stage.
The Catacombs
was managed with great personal energy
by Bob Cope, and owned by Ames Productions, the company founded by brothers
Richard
and Steve Ames.
With money from the local oil
industry (their family owned Ames Oil
and Gas), they not
only bought into the Catacombs,
but managed several local bands and
ran their own record label,
Tantara. While older brother Richard
looked after business, Steve Ames was a musician and songwriter himself
and
played keyboards with Neal Ford and the Fanatics, who during the latter part of 1966 were not only the house
band at the Catacombs but the most popular band in
Houston. By this time however,
Ames, who had only one
kidney, had already retired from stage
work, finding that the late nights and
travelling were seriously affecting his
health.
Formed at the end of 1964 by singer
Neal Ford, at age 20 already
a veteran of several teen-pop singles with the Ramadas and the VIPs,
the
Fanatics mixed hard-edged, Kinks-and-Stones derived rock with
solid R&B,
folk-rock and novelty pop. Though
hardly
psychedelic (Ford absolutely
forbade any use of drugs or even alcohol when the band was working)
they were
no strangers to fuzz, driving Hammond organ and the odd weirdly
menacing chord
sequence or guitar riff. Yet this was
always combined with an adherence
to old-fashioned
showmanship that demanded smartly matching outfits
and
corny
synchronized onstage routines such
as the band all crouching down in a line and rowing across the stage
with
their guitars.
The original line-up featured Ford
alongside guitarists
Johnny 'String' Stringfellow and Jon 'Big Jon' Pereles, plus WT 'Dub' Johnson on bass,
John
'Baby John' Cravey on drums and Dennis
Senter on keyboards, who didn't last
long enough to acquire a nick name. After the Fanatics' debut single in
January
1965, “I Will Not Be Lonely” (a garage classic) he was replaced by
Steve Ames,
with brother Richard coming in as the
band's manager. At the beginning of 1966
the Ames brothers established Tantara Records in order to release The
Fanatics'
second single, the moody, psych-tinged folk-rock of “Bitter Bells”.
Steve Ames stayed with the Fanatics
through the summer of
1966, a time when the band's profile rose steadily, with local airplay,
appearances on the Larry Kane Show and increasingly well-attended
shows,
including opening slots for the Beach
Boys and the Lovin' Spoonful.
They were regularly mobbed by
screaming girls, and
gigs often deteriorated into
near-riots as the local kids decided to re-enact the scenes of
Beatlemania they'd seen in the newsreels
with the Fab Four's closest local
equivalent.
In June the Fanatics released a cover
of “All I Have to
Do is Dream” on Tantara, but shortly afterwards
Ames left to concentrate on
management
and production. He was replaced on keys
by 18- year-old Lanier Greig, a far
flashier player whose frenetic organ runs became characteristic of the
classic
Fanatics line-up.
The band's fourth single, “I Will if
You Want To” (September 1966) had a
brooding majesty that
was distinctly psychedelic, with John Stringfellow's greasy slide
guitar
echoing over the spare, rolling rhythm,
and Greig's understated keys descending into an aural abyss of loss and
despair
on the bridge. The Fanatics' profile was
boosted still further when Ames signed
them
nationwide to Nashville's Hickory label,
who released the bizarre,
cod-gothic single “Shame on You” in January 1967.
It was the flip, “Gonna
Be My Girl”, however that became
a number one single on both of Houston's major
radio stations, resulting in the Fanatics requiring a police
escort whenever
they played a show in town.
In February 1967 they were
clear winners of a Houston Post Battle of the Bands, yet to tell the truth their
star
was already on the wane, as Hickory
guided them in a middle-of-the-road direction increasingly at odds with
the
times, and Ames Productions focused
their
attention on another of their small
stable of acts: the Moving Sidewalks.
----------------------------------------------------------
If Thursday's Children and the Lemon Fog seemed behind the times in
1968, then the once-popular Neal Ford
and the Fanatics must have come over as positively antediluvian, with their old fashioned show-business values
and choreographed stage show. Yet Ford's onstage athleticism was not a
million miles from the sort of performance for which Iggy Pop would
later be
acclaimed; stage diving, executing splits and somersaults, climbing the
wall,
and balancing on balcony railings. Moreover,
the band
was still capable of rocking hard
when allowed, and Ford was a decent songwriter, not afraid to
experiment with
fuzz and other weird effects in the studio. But
their
more adventurous songs were too
often left in the can, and the Fanatics'
November 1967 album for Hickory was hamstrung by too many
written-to-order bubblegum confections and
middle-of-the-road
ballads. In 1968 the clean-living
Ford
even turned down Mickey
Newbury's “Just Dropped In (To See What
Condition My Condition Was In)” because of its sly drug connotations,
which
didn't bother Kenny Rogers' First Edition, who turned the
song into a soft psych-country classic.
The symbolic turning
point came when Neal Ford and the Fanatics opened for Jimi
Hendrix on
two Texan dates of his spring 1968 US tour,
and were all but booed off the stage. The
first
show, at San Antonio Municipal
Auditorium (February 15th) apparently went down well,
but the following night at Dallas
Fair Park Music Hall the jeers from
the audience got to the band. With their Hickory deal expired, they
lost
confidence and momentum and never really recovered; Ford quit in May
1969, and the
Fanatics struggled on without him until mid-1970.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
At the end of August 1968 the
Catacombs club hosted the
KNUZ Pop Festival, a major event and the
biggest show ever held at the club,
featuring the Mothers of Invention, Country Joe and the Fish and Canned Heat in a ten-hour show
for just five bucks. The Moving
Sidewalks, along with Neal Ford and
the Fanatics and Matchbox, were to be the local support. But
disgruntled
with the way Ames Productions were
handling their album, the Moving Sidewalks decided, on the spur of the
moment,
to miss the gig and drive out to Los Angeles instead. They
played
Gazzarri's and The Galaxy on
Sunset Strip minus organist
Tom Moore, who assumed
they were having him on and refused
to get out of bed when they pulled up outside his house at midnight,
trailer
loaded with their equipment. He was left to explain the band's
no-show
to Steve Ames alone.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Things got worse soon after when
Moore was drafted to
fight in Vietnam; the Moving Sidewalks continued playing as a trio, but started to feel like
they
were chasing their own tail,
going round in circles playing the same
old club circuit, while their album release date was
continuously put back.
Following a performance at Spring Branch High
School Senior Prom in May 1969, the Moving Sidewalks parted company
with Ames
Productions. By this time
they already knew that Flash was dated
in its
psychedelic trickery, as well as being too
in
thrall to Hendrix, and the
remaining trio
were
desperate to go back
into the studio to record new material,
which
Ames refused to allow.
The final straw
came
when Don Summers too was drafted,
and on the 6th and 7th of June the Moving Sidewalks played
their final shows at Love Street Light Circus.
Against their wishes, Flash was finally
released at the end of August.
Gibbons and
drummer Dan Mitchell were determined to carry on however, and
with Steve
Ames out of the picture they signed a management contract with an
ambitious
Texan music impresario in his early
thirties named Bill Ham. Ham had
caught the Moving Sidewalks opening for
the Doors, and had introduced
himself to the band afterwards. On the 4th of July 1969, Gibbons and
Mitchell
were back onstage at Love Street, with former Fanatics keyboard player
Lanier
Greig playing organ and laying down bass parts with his foot pedals,
while Bill
Ham looked on approvingly. This new
configuration
of the Moving Sidewalks also had a new name: ZZ Top.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Even after 1983's
synthesizer-and-drum machine-driven Eliminator
album sent ZZ Top into the upper echelons of pop music worldwide, Billy
Gibbons
never forgot his roots, and championed the likes of the 13th Floor
Elevators at
every opportunity. In 2013 he reformed
the original line-up of the Moving Sidewalks for a series of sold-out
live performances;
sadly Lanier Greig died in February that same year.
Back
to
the Neal Ford & The Fanatics Page