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Cherry
Red Records' double CD compilation ‘The Legendary Gold Star Album’ (CD BRED
142, 1997), compiled from lost acetates of a session recorded by one of the
earliest line-ups of The Misunderstood in Hollywood during 1966, neatly
slots into place the final missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle of one of the
most innovative and enigmatic bands of the Sixties. Recorded shortly before
they left for England under the tutelage of John Peel, the album is
accompanied by a CD entitled ‘Golden Glass’ which was recorded by a
completely re-vamped line up, still based around steel guitar player Glenn
Campbell (no, not that Glenn Campbell!), during 1969. ‘Golden Glass’
originally came out as an LP, on Cherry Red’s Time Stood Still imprint,
during 1984; two years before that, the label had assembled what was for
many the first taste of the music of what’s become one of the psychedelic
era’s best loved groups, a series of tracks recorded in England and America
between roughly 1965 and 1967 by variations on the original line-up
collectively entitled ‘Before The Dream Faded’ (also reissued on CD by
Cherry Red, catalogue number CD BRED 32. Until 1982 however, very little was
known about the band at all, and if it weren’t for the sterling services of
a certain Mr. Nigel Cross of this parish, I daresay little still would be
known. The level of interest generated even caused a brief reunion amongst
band-members; Brown and Campbell recorded an EP for Cherry Red under the
name The Influence during 1981.
Despite therefore the story of the
Misunderstood being unravelled by Nigel at least once a decade across the
past quarter century, as far as I can recall a full-length interview with
Glenn Ross Campbell has never previously appeared. Trust your trusty
Terrascope to put that one right! It’s been a project I’ve been promising
myself we’d do for a few years now, but the opportunity finally presented
itself only a few months back when an acquaintance of mine, Richie
Unterberger, announced he was interviewing Glenn as part of a chapter on the
Misunderstood for his book about sixty “cult rock” artists, scheduled to be
published by Miller Freeman Books in early 1998. Richie was kind enough to
grant us permission to publish the full transcript of his interview, and
here we are.
First though, some background information, a
necessary evil since Campbell himself wasn’t actually a founder member of
the Misunderstood. Their origins can be traced back to 1963, when George
Phelps (guitar), drummer Rick Moe and rhythm guitarist Greg Treadway formed
a surf band called The Blue Notes (who apparently sported blue guitars, blue
shoes and even blue hair!). Lead vocalist Rick Brown and bassist Steve
Whiting were added in 1964, and the band changed their name to The
Misunderstood, whereupon George Phelps left (to join Rod Piazza and his
Dirty Blues Band) and was replaced by Glenn Ross Campbell, veteran of such
local (Riverside, California) bands as the Goldtones. Shortly before
Campbell joined, the band cut a six song acetate at the William Locy Sound
Co. Studio in Riverside consisting of British-styled R&B numbers with an
added dash of vintage U.S. garage punk, written by Rick Brown and Greg
Treadway, four of which (one uncredited on the sleeve) are included on
Cherry Red’s ‘Before The Dream Faded’ collection. On Campbell’s arrival the
new line-up recorded their first single, a cover of Jimmy Reed’s ‘You Don’t
Have To Go Out’ backed with Howlin’ Wolf’s ‘Who’s Been Talking’ for the
Blues Sound Records label. In 1966, travelling English disc jockey John
Ravenscroft (a.k.a. Peel) heard them incorporating feedback guitar and
unusual arrangements into their live act and, excited by the possibilities,
hatched plans to get them into the studios again, and at Gold Star in
Hollywood they recorded the tracks - mostly R&B covers again, with John Peel
producing - which Cherry Red recently released as the somewhat hopefully
titled ‘The Legendary Gold Star Album’. Sadly at least one song recorded at
the session has failed to resurface, an epic version of ‘I’m Not Talkin’’
during which the band reputedly walked out of the room for a smoke leaving
their instruments to feed back into the microphones! Shortly afterwards, the
band made it over to England, secured a record contract and replaced
Treadway with guitarist Tony Hill (from Co. Durham by way of London and
formerly a member of the Answers). There they began the best documented part
of their career, cutting such psychedelic masterpieces as ‘I Can Take You To
The Sun’ (their debut 45 for Fontana), again included on ‘Before The Dream
Faded’. After recording another handful of songs for Phillips in Paris
during April 1967, tapes of which have never been found, the band split up
in early 1967, Hill going on to critical success with High Tide (whose story
was documented in Ptolemaic Terrascope issues 2 and 12) and, with the UK
immigration department breathing down the necks of the remnants, Campbell,
after a final attempt to keep the Misunderstood name going with an entirely
new line-up (from whence the ‘Golden Glass’ material, uh, stems), formed
Juicy Lucy, who went on to have a brush with chart success via their
(inferior, to my mind, to the Misunderstood’s own) version of ‘Who Do You
Love’. He subsequently worked through a variety of bands including Joe
Cocker’s backing group and the Greaseband circa. 1972/3 before returning to
California, and thence to New Zealand. But, we’re getting ahead of ourselves
here. Glenn Campbell himself takes up the story:
PT: When you first joined the Misunderstood, they were playing in a more
straight-ahead blues/rock style than a psychedelic one.
GC: Yeah, definitely. A contemporary at the time was Rod Piazza's band the
Mystics, playing very much the same material. But the Misunderstood were,
even before I joined them, playing stuff like Them and Pretty Things. George
Phelps was the guitar player at that time. I'm not sure why he left the
group or why they wanted him out, but they actually came looking for me. It
stemmed from one gig I did with a band called the Answers. I'd had trouble
getting jobs because I was a steel guitar player, I literally used to get
beat up when I went to auditions for other bands. But the Misunderstood
didn't seem to have any reserves on that point at all. They had big old
house on Magnolia Avenue. When I went over there, I took about eight people
with me. I didn't want any fights if I could help it. It was quite a funny
situation. All my friends were lined up on one side of the room, and the
band were lined up on theirs, as I unpacked my steel guitar. And of course
the legs screw in the old Fender lap steels, and you could hear the
squeaking of the legs as I screwed them in. You could hear a pin drop.
Finally I got set up, and we went into it, and the first song, everybody
just started laughing, and said it was great, and that was it. And from that
time on, we started doing regular rehearsals. I had to learn their material,
of course, first. I had been listening to a whole bunch of different kind of
stuff. A lot of Library of Congress records. One was really primitive music
from tribes in New Guinea. I even had an early Maharishi or something, that
had some Indian music on it, and him spieling away about transcendental
meditation. There were a lot of concepts in so-called primitive music that
were fascinating to me, and I thought could be incorporated in the stuff
that we were doing. I would introduce some of these little ideas every now
and then to the group. Usually I would meet with resistance from most bands
that I'd been with. But with Misunderstood, there was none of that. They
were fascinated, as much as I was. Anything new at all, Rick just jumped on
it straight away, and he would immediately develop either a technique or
style that bent around our particular problem or innovation. There was just
such an energy and a willingness to try new things. Steve Whiting was quite
interesting because he really wanted to be a guitar player. But, like so
many frustrated guitar players, he ended up playing bass, 'cause it was the
quickest way to get into a band. In actual fact, he was a brilliant bass
player. But because of that, because of the guitar interest, he often played
it in an unconventional way. It turned out to be very similar to the
approach a lot of the British bass players had. Greg Treadway played a
little keyboard. He could have been quite good on keyboards, he seemed to be
a natural for that. But he was also the rhythm guitar player. Didn't do a
lot of lead. But there again, he provided a really good humour base for the
group too. If there was ever any tension, he'd just come across with
something that broke everybody up and later in England, when he left or got
drafted or whatever, it was quite hard for me, because he was my sort of
grounding, my touch stone. Nothing ever got too heavy because you'd just
laughing for hours with Greg. Everybody had their particular talent, but I
think the thing about the Misunderstood that was kind of magic was that they
were willing to try anything. It was a perfect ground for experimentation,
which we did a lot. Of course, we'd do it at rehearsal, and if we got
something to work, we would build a song around the little experiment and
work it into the show, and try it on the audience.
PT: You told me that at one time the Misunderstood had pretended they
were a British band?
There was an article in the paper before I ever joined the Misunderstood.
They had evidently tried to pawn themselves off as a British band, and
actually did it. They got an interview in the local newspaper, and all the
kids knew it was bull. But I mean, it was funny. And I thought, now these
are the kind of guys-entrepreneurial, cheeky kind of guys-I'd like to be
with. So when Rick Brown called and said he was with the Misunderstood,
that's when I got the guys to make sure I got heard. When I got the gig we
just shot off. Everybody had a lot of energy and enthusiasm, and they were
adventuresome. That's why when the idea to go to England came up, it wasn't
just summarily knocked aside.
PT: It seemed the Yardbirds in particular were a big influence on the
Misunderstood around 1966. To what extent was this true, and what were the
group's other principal influences/inspirations?
GC: As far as the influence from the British R&B things, the Yardbirds
particularly, and the Who to a certain extent. The Yardbirds were almost to
us like a kindred spirit. It was very much in the style that we were already
doing anyway. Of course it was ready-made, and being human beings, we were
basically lazy, so we covered their tunes. In one sense, our musical
appreciation/education took off, especially when John Peel showed up. 'Cause
he had a lot of that stuff. He also had the history and where they got their
influences from. So we had a pretty good crash course there in a matter of
months on artists and material and history. But the Who was interesting. Not
so much that we copied any of their songs directly, but the drumming
technique interested me, the way they recorded it, and how the drums was
used in the group. It was funny-when we went to England, we were walking
down Oxford Street, I believe it was, and the Who were playing during lunch
hour in this underground sort of basement club. We were just amazed. England
didn't even like the Who at that point very much. They considered them sort
of teenybopper kind of stuff. But we didn't hear them that way. We heard
them as being rather innovative and that kind of amazed us. Of course, later
on they ended up becoming very popular indeed.
PT: When the group started to play its most innovative original material
live-with the feedback, guitar effects, and so forth-what was the reaction
like among audiences?
GC: Pretty much stunned, really. The local kids come to expect bizarre from
the Misunderstood, because that's what we're famous for. I remember we
played Pandora's Box in L.A. and the audience just didn't know how to take
it. They came to a standstill and would stare, mouths hanging open. With the
feedback and everything, they just never heard anything like it. Riverside
was very much the same way. I remember, I wanted to start incorporating
light into our show in different ways. I was in contact with some engineers
and I wanted to make a unit, which now you can get in almost any store, what
they now call a colour organ, which as you play would divide the musical
frequencies up into three colours, and pulsate the lights accordingly. That
had never been heard of at that point. We were told it was impossible to
make it. But I refused to give up, so I got some motorcycle light bulbs and
car tail lights, and hooked them up with guitar jacks, and stuck them into
the external speaker connections of our amps. And lo and behold, they worked
like a charm. They were only white, but as you played and got louder, they
would ebb and flow with the volume and frequency range. We just cracked up
laughing. It was a really great effect. We did a gig at a huge concert-like
place, and got the owner of the club to turn the lights off. He didn't want
to do it, 'cause he was afraid people'd start stabbing each other or
something. Anyway, we got him to turn all the lights off, pitch black, and
we went into this song with these lights and feedback. We got the
instruments feeding back, and left the stage. The feedback would go into
harmonics and octave changes and so on and so forth. It was kind of eerie,
because the lights were going up and down, the audience’s faces would come
into focus and stuff, and they were like hypnotised, stunned, just standing
there. And we thought, man, hey, we've stumbled onto something here. It left
a mark with the audience, and the word got around, and from that time on, we
were considered the sort of alchemists of the music scene at that time. It
did a lot for our reputation.
PT: What was John Peel's role in the Goldstar sessions (from early '66)?
GC: It seems to me he was there at the recording, or had something to do
with it. I can’t remember. But it was at Goldstar, and I remember we made up
two acetates. One of the acetates had a real long version of, I think, ‘I'm
Not Talking’ on it. An extremely long version, like half an hour or
something like that.
PT: Much longer than the five-and-a-half-minute one that eventually came
out on Cherry Red.
GC: Yeah. That [the long version] was on a separate acetate, and we had
another acetate with the shorter version on it. I can't remember the rest of
the songs that were on them. But that one acetate has gone missing. The
other acetate is the one they've been using, I guess, on most of that
reissue stuff; we found that one.
PT: What were the reasons the group decided to move to England from
Riverside?
GC: Probably boredom, really. We'd done everything we could do in that local
area. L.A. was hard to break into, unless you had an agent of some sort. We
hadn't had any luck on that scene. We were just half-joking really, I said,
jeez, maybe we oughta go to England. And they'd go, yeah, that'd be great,
that's where it's happening. So we called the airlines, and found the
cheapest way to go there would be to fly to New York, and then catch a boat
from there to England. We found out how much it would cost, and then we
started pooling our money together and of course, we didn't have enough. I
think it was around this time that we ran into John Peel. Of course, he was
from England, and one day we sort of timidly asked, well, what do you think
our chances would be in England? And he'd go, hey, that'd be a great idea!
You should go there, by all means. Everything was pointing towards England.
There was the music, the covers we were knocking off, and there was a style
that people would seem to appreciate. Also, I'd been chased through
department stores in public because I had long hair. The Misunderstood all
had long hair way before the Beatles. It wasn't the Beatles I was copying,
it was American Indians I was emulating, 'cause I was really into Indian
history and culture. So John said, look, you guys gotta get to England. And
that just clinched it for us. We went full ahead on that idea. We used John
to sort of placate the parents, 'cause they all thought we were going to get
sold to white slavers or something, and he tried to convince them it was all
reasonably civilised. We put together a battle of the bands, which was
virtually fixed. I mean, there's no way we could have lost it. But we
probably would have won it anyway. The only other band that was really
serious competition would have been Rod Piazza and the Mystics. We did about
three of these battle of the bands, and John collected the money for us.
That got us our tickets, and we were on our way there. It was an incredible
group effort.
PT: The liner notes of ‘Before the Dream
Faded’ say that the group arrived at John Peel's mother's doorstep in
England, and you had to wait for eight hours while she called John in the
States, as she wasn't expecting you. It's a great story-but is it true? When
I spoke to John, he said he honestly couldn't remember.
GC: Eight hours? Hell, we waited three days! The whole affair, the story of
the boat and the trip over, is a book in itself. But to make a long story
short, we miraculously got all our equipment off. If customs had ever seen
all our equipment, we'd have never gotten into England. But the crew on the
boat really liked us, and they snuck it off. We didn't know where the
equipment was, we were looking around and we go, that looks like all our
stuff there. And it was actually loaded right by the baggage compartment of
the train to London. It was exactly the same as the Beatles in that first
movie they did, where they were sitting in that sort of caged compartment in
the train. We just couldn't believe it. And there was even two girls that
came along and they're going, are you guys a band or something? And we go,
yeah. They rode with us to London in this baggage car. It was just like the
movie, just incredible. So, we're riding high. And we got off and get a taxi
to John's place. And we thought they were all informed and knew we were
coming and everything. We get there, and there's nobody there. I mean, we
got a mountain of equipment-amps, drums, everything, all in cardboard boxes,
and clothes. We're standing out there, and all this stuff was lined up by
their doorway on either side, along a wrought-iron fence. It starts raining
on us, and we're pulling out raincoats and putting it over the equipment and
getting soaked. Pretty soon the neighbours get curious, 'cause we'd been
there overnight, and they come the next morning and bring us cups of tea and
more blankets and stuff like that. We're all wrapped up like Indians on a
reservation. We're there literally for a couple of days. Finally, John's
parents come home. And they walked straight in the house, didn't even
acknowledge our presence. We were kind of numb anyway, shell-shocked from
being there. And we're all like, what the hell is this? So we kind of
snapped out of it and went banging on the door, and said excuse us, but
we're the Misunderstood. Quite obviously, they'd never heard of us, they
claimed, or anything about it. And so they called John in the States, but
they had to wait another eight hours to call because of the time difference.
They wouldn't let us in until they checked it all out. Eventually they
called and got it all straightened out, and they let us in. Which must have
been horrific for them! I was really sick, feverish - if it wasn't
pneumonia, it was pretty close to it. So they wrapped me up in bed. I was
down for the count. In the meantime, we had a short-list of about three
managers that John had given us, months before, of possible contacts who
might be interested. We called the first one on the list, and he was
interested enough to say come on down. That was Nigel Thomas, and we took
our promo package and played it for him. He eventually got us signed up with
Fontana Records. So yeah, that was a sort of less than momentous arrival.
But as I said, it worked out all right.
PT: And Rick Brown followed on later?
Rick flew in about a couple weeks later. He was under the impression that we
were already famous, and there was going to be a crowd waiting at the
airport. I don't know where he got this idea, unless Greg, the prankster,
set him up. Rick got quite a shock when we had to jump over the ticket
gates, and try to crash through them to get on the subways. Actually the
cops got called and we ended up having to split up. The cops were chasing us
and jeez, this wasn't what Rick had in mind at all. But we ended up getting
back to the little flat that the manager found for us.
PT: How did the group's sound change when Tony Hill joined the band?
GC: It certainly gave us more scope. Greg was a great rhythm player, and was
complimentary to whatever we did, but he didn't really provide any solo
input. So it was a big load off me, because I could turn around and do sound
effects, as Tony was a great soloist in his own right. Plus he had other
interests, which gave us a lot bigger palette to work with. He was at the
time quite interested in classical gut-string guitar. In fact the ending of
‘I Can Take You To The Sun’, that really pretty ending with the acoustic
classical guitar on the end, Tony had been mucking with that at rehearsal,
we asked that he stick it on the end of the song and it became a really
important piece of the song. It was like I really had something to bounce
off of. We could do harmonies. It allowed for really a lot more detailed
arrangements. So really for us it was just the sky was opening up. The whole
thing with Tony in the band was kind of fortuitous. We were at I think a
rehearsal hall, and he had been there with somebody else, either in another
rehearsal room or recording, I can't remember. He just happened to hear us.
I'm pretty sure Greg had already left, and we were just mucking around,
trying out some ideas. And he started questioning us when we came out of the
rehearsal room. And we said, well, we're looking for a guitar player. And he
grabbed his guitar and sat in for a couple numbers, and that was about it.
Right from the word go, it worked great. We were doing some bizarre things,
and just asked him to throw some ideas in, and he was quick on his feet,
which is what we needed. We needed someone who wasn't intimidated, or wasn't
too stuck in a sort of style that couldn't come up with some ideas. Plus he
was someone that understood the English market. So that was good for us.
PT: What was the reaction like from British audiences when you played
live?
GC: In actual fact, we didn't do a whole lot of live gigs. We probably only
did a handful, because it was illegal for us to. We didn't have a work
permit, and the manager was afraid that the Home Office would find out about
it, and send us out of there just as we were starting to roll. So we only
did a handful of gigs, and very carefully chosen. The Marquee Club, I think,
was one, and we did two or three others. But the one that was quite
startling was a debut thing at Fontana Records. They had all the press there
and everything, kind of like a record release kind of thing. We did our
regular set and then we did this thing where we pulled out an envelope and
we said, there's a piece of paper in the envelope with a word written on it.
And what we want you to do in this next song, if you want to call it that,
we'll play for approximately six minutes, and then we're gonna ask you
questions about what you heard. What we want to know is what the song made
you feel like, or makes you think of. Everybody goes, all right. So we did
it. At the end, we asked people what they had felt. One person goes, for
some reason, I kept getting flashes of when I was a kid in my father's apple
orchard. And I go, yeah, okay, that's good. So we went to the next one, and
she goes, oh, I had a craving for apple sauce. And we did about three or
four, and they were all spot-on. And I thought, well, this is too good to be
true, so I'll stop there. So we open the envelope, and of course the word in
the envelope was “apple”. And the reaction to that - oh, man, the flashbulbs
went off, and all these people there got spooked. They were throwing up
their arms and running out and screaming, and oh jeez, it was just
incredible. We were amazed. We'd been trying the sound at rehearsals on
people and we'd get mixed results. Sometimes it worked a little bit, and
most of the time it didn't. This time it worked incredibly well. The
technique was that we'd kind of meditate before we did the song on the
subject. Then we would play during a fixed set of time. And during that
time, as a group, you could either not play at all, or play anything you
wanted, as long as you felt it was relating to your experience of the
subject. An apple, or whatever. It wasn't, truly speaking, meditation. But
it was just a period to sort of clear our minds from any other thoughts. In
fact, when it didn't work it was usually because something else was
bothering somebody, like somebody was mad at their girlfriend, or extremely
hungry, which was most of the time. You had to be really neutral and open,
and then you would get a certain amount of success. But it blew us away. It
was almost 100%. We couldn't believe the stir it caused. When it hit the
papers it was good for publicity, but it also kind of spooked us a bit,
because being Americans, we knew all the conspiracy stuff, we knew that if
governments got hold of something like this, who knows what would happen. I
had a book that was about two and a half inches thick. It was a notebook of
various chords and rhythm combinations and all sorts of stuff, inversions,
harmonies that would seem to produce certain effects. So we could write
songs with these various already researched combinations, and expect a
certain response from an audience. And of course, the idea was not to
control an audience or anything. The idea ultimately was that we could set
up healing centres to use music and lights in a sort of combination in a
holistic kind of way. If there was a natural phenomena, it might be a very
powerful instrument for healing. This is the kind of thing we were thinking
about. But we all got a bit worried and we actually took the book and
destroyed it. We felt we’d stumbled something we didn't really want to get
in the wrong hands, and it kind of spooked us a bit. So that book just got
tore up and burned.
PT:
By this point, the group's sound had evolved into some of the most
innovative early psychedelic music around. Compared to the other British and
American groups of the time, how do you think the Misunderstood stood
out/were unique?
GC: A lot of it was that we were approaching it like a trio. Much like
Hendrix did later, and Cream. The way Tony and I were playing at that point,
we kind of weaved and ducked and twisted around, but we were almost as one
instrument when it worked right. That's the kind of sound we were looking
for. Of course, the other thing was the steel guitar. In those early days, I
actually had an advantage over the guitar in the sense that I had a lot of
sustain. The only thing I couldn't really do was strum like a guitar player.
As far as scales, the only thing that was holding me back was tunings. And I
was pretty innovative on that. Also we were experimenting with fuzztones
really early on. There was a guy named Bartel that made a fuzzbox called a
Bartel Shatterbox. That's what I actually ended up taking to England. And
that was really unique. It made all these horrendous noises, and we cranked
it up like screaming and squawking and feedback, which was exactly what we
wanted. So that was quite innovative for the time as well. Also just
visually, the steel guitar had an odd look to it. I'd put it aslant and hump
the legs and all that kind of malarkey. So it looked weird, and sounded
bizarre, and that added greatly to the uniqueness of the band.
PT: Nigel Cross writes in his liner notes to ‘Before the Dream Faded’
that the Misunderstood were exploring some directions that would be followed
by Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix on their first records, a few months later.
Do you feel you might have influenced those bands, or other bands in
England? If so, how?
GC: We kept getting reports from people that were seeing Pink Floyd that
they were copying a lot of our stage act. The few times that we played, they
obviously were in the audience and copied a lot of stuff. But they had a lot
of money behind them. I know they were getting synths and stuff like that
way before anybody else could afford to get 'em. And it was kind of bugging
us, because the few times we played, people were starting to rip off our
stage show, such as it was. This'd come from other people-I never even saw
Pink Floyd live, so I couldn't say first-hand. But this is just coming from
other people that'd seen both bands. I don't think Jimi Hendrix ripped us
off. But I know he was at some of the gigs, because I talked to Jimi a
couple of times in those early days, and he was I guess what you'd call
psychedelic. But he was still heavily blues-based at that point. It wasn't
people were ripping off, really. It was a time of sharing, really. Things
were just popping right and left at that time in England. I don't think we
really appreciated the time when we were there. England was great because
nobody made a fuss over you on the street. You'd go in with long hair and
bell-bottoms and talk [with] a bank manager, and he would give you a loan to
start a business or something. That would be unheard of in the States.
England was great, too, in the sense that you could be experimental. In
fact, they didn't want people to be like cover bands so much. They wanted
people to be creative. Everything was creative-clothes, music, art. God,
every street had an art gallery on it. Just walking down the street and
seeing some of the latest fads in the art world and stuff. You didn't even
have to pay to go in. You could just look in the window, and it was just...
it was really an inspiring town at that time.
PT: How do you feel about the tracks that you recorded with Fontana in
the U.K.? Did they effectively capture the band's best material?
GC: Yes. I think they did a really good job. I mean, you have to keep in
mind it was only four track, I think that's all Fontana had at that time.
And the actual guy that ran the machines was in the basement. You had to
phone him up to tell him to rewind or stop or whatever. And they never ever
once told me how to play. They just said, do what you want to do, and we'll
record it. Dick Leahy was the producer, he just bent over backwards. And the
engineer, Roger, I can't remember his last name [that would be Roger T. Wake
- Ed.] They just did incredible things for the times. I remember there was
one that I was hitting some high notes, and they just disappeared. Their
equipment couldn't record that high a note. And that was the only time, and
they felt quite bad about that. They couldn't get it on tape. But they just
did phenomenal things. Just bent over backwards. They'd try different mikes,
or they'd try different baffling. The more bizarre and weirder it got, the
more interesting it got. I remember the president of Fontana was talking
with me and caught on that I'd done standards. He was gonna set up a whole
big string orchestra, Nelson Riddle kind of thing, and he wanted to do a
Christmas album with me doing steel guitar Christmas songs, kind of a little
funkier. It sounds crazy, but I would have enjoyed doing that just for a new
direction, something to try.
PT: Was there any material recorded for Fontana that was unused/unissued?
If so, what was it like?
GC: I don't believe so. I think people pretty much gone into the vaults
looking for that some stuff. I can't remember anything that hasn't been
issued that Fontana had, any outtakes or anything. And most of the takes
were usually first or second takes, so there wouldn't be many outtakes
either.
PT: Is the account that Nigel Cross gives in his liner notes about the
breakup of the group - Rick Brown's draft problems, the group's visa
problems - accurate?
GC: Yeah, certainly. The draft problems got Rick, for sure. The upshot of
all that was basically he went AWOL. He went into Haight-Ashbury and ended
up dealing drugs to survive. I'm not quite sure what happened. He fell foul
of some sort of syndicate or something, and they were after him as well,
besides the FBI. He booked it to England. I don't know how long he was in
England. The FBI was hot on his trail. He got out just literally by the skin
of teeth, and he went to India. When he was there, he ended up joining up
with the Hare Krishna sect under the head guru, the main guy. There was
another American there studying, and they became friends. I don't know the
details again, but they discovered a ruby mine, I believe, somewhere in
India or someplace. Rick eventually came back to California, and he got
lawyers to clear up the draft thing that was still hanging over his head.
They actually stuck him back in the army and shaved his head for one day,
and gave him some kind of discharge. That was the end of that. I think he
went to live in Bangkok permanently. As far as I know he's still there, I
haven't heard another word from him.
PT: It's been reported that when he went back to England after the
Misunderstood had broken up, Rick Brown shared a flat with Jeff Beck. But
according to your recollection, this actually happened when Rick first came
over here with the group.
GC: That was pretty early on. We were all living in a basement flat. It was
really quite hideous. It was just freezing cold, and we used to have rats
coming out of the boarded up fireplace. Big old ones, too - I'd never seen
rats as big as they got in London. Rick couldn't put up with that. But he
used to go out partying a lot. He was sort of the gadfly of the group,
really. Somehow, he ended up flatting with Jeff Beck. He was living with him
shortly after we first landed. As far as I know, when he went back to
England, he went straight to John Peel's and was there, and then the FBI
caught up with him, and he was out. Everybody was telling me that John
turned him in, and I can't believe that. We'd been through too much back in
the States. I can't imagine why he'd do it.
PT: How much time was there between when Rick Brown left and the time you
left England?
GC: Not that much. It's all kind of cloudy, really. We were so hungry all of
the time. All those pictures that were taken, if you look at us, we're all
sort of drawn out and everything. It's actually just hunger, plain and
simple. We were living on, like, ten shillings a week. Which was easier to
do then than it is now, but it still wasn't that easy. It would have been
weeks rather than months, probably. We auditioned a whole bunch of people to
fill Rick's spot. That might have been at Ronnie Scott's. Somebody famous
auditioned too, and went on to make it later on, and I can't remember who it
is now. I got told about that years later.
PT: How was it that the group broke up after Rick Brown was gone?
GC: The rest of us went through just about as bizarre a situation. We never
had work permits, it was all being done illegally. This was with Nigel
Thomas. We had some equipment on order, and eventually it came in, these new
Marshall amps, 200-watt Marshall amp stacks. They were dogs, really, but I
mean, just as a point of interest, I think that Cream got 'em after us. But
at any rate, Nigel had this minder, a sort of thug. We were kind of fed up
with Nigel for whatever reason. He [the minder] says look, I'll manage you,
I know all those contacts, blah blah blah. I wasn't going for it, but the
other guys were. I thought the guy was full of shit myself. And as it turned
out, he was. He said he had a whole bunch of work for us in France. We made
contact at this record company that we were supposed to record at. To make a
long story short, that guy [back in England] stole all our equipment, all
those new amps and everything else. He literally stole it, put it in a van
and stuck it in a garage somewhere. So we’re stuck in France. We went into
the record company, and Tony had a bunch of songs that he'd written. I think
he and Steve went in and made like a demo tape of all these songs, and sold
them, and we split the money up. That gave us enough for, like, gas money.
Steve knew this hooker back in England. She phoned up and said she was going
to marry him. So they let him back in the country through her. Tony got in
'cause he's English anyway, and that left me and Rick Moe, the drummer. Rick
got his parents to send us two pre-paid tickets to Paris, but to leave from
London. So we figured, okay, that'll get us back in, and we'll go find this
guy and get our equipment back to pay for the tickets. Of course, it didn't
work quite that smoothly, although it did eventually end up happening. But
we finally got on the boat, and they wouldn't let us off! We got to England,
they wouldn't let us off, and went back again to France, they wouldn't let
us off. We kept going back and forth. This went on for three days! And we
were starving! So we started taking food off people's plates, and the
captain had sent some goons down and more or less put us under guard. We
told him our story, and he goes, okay, what side do you want off on? And we
go, England side. So we get back to England, and the first thing we do, we
break into this guy's flat and found the licence number of the van. We
reckoned he had it parked in some public garage. So we just got the phone
book and started dialling. And the first one we phoned, we gave him the
licence number, and they go, oh yeah, it's parked here. Luck started
happening for us. We took off and we found it. I just grabbed my steel
[guitar] out of it, and Rick grabbed his drums. We went straight down and
sold them.
PT: Had this lineup managed to stay together (with Rick Brown, Tony Hill
etc.), what do you think it might have achieved, and what might future
records have sounded like?
GC: I think we would have achieved quite a bit. I think it would have been a
major group. There was nothing holding us back, no telling what would have
happened if it had kept going. Especially with Tony in the band, because he
had a lot more scope.
PT: How would you compare the sound of the Misunderstood that recorded in
England for Fontana in 1966, and the lineup that recorded the material that
ended up on the ‘Golden Glass’ reissue?
GC: Totally different. Steve Hoard was the singer, I brought him over from
California. He was with a band called Cock Robin, and they were just to sign
up with Capitol about the time. But he opted to come over, and our influence
was that we were listening to bands like Rhinoceros and Junior Wells who had
an album out called Tuff Enough. When we got together, we wanted a certain
R&B kind of thing. It wasn't our idea to use the name Misunderstood. In
fact, we fought against it, because it wasn't anything like Misunderstood,
except for me being in the band. But the record company insisted that we use
it, for obvious reasons. Guy Evans was the drummer, from Van Der Graaf
Generator, and Nick Potter on bass, who worked with Jeff Beck for quite a
few years after us. And they were brilliant guys. It was a trio, with Steve
singing. We wrote the songs, more or less, on the spot for the album. I
liked that band. It was much better live than the recordings were. But for
some reason, the powers that be didn’t like Steve. Unbeknownst to me, they
were actually plotting to get him out of the band. That ‘Golden Glass’ thing
was probably the last song we recorded. I think Dick Leahy was producing
again. He kept asking me to do something psychedelic. And I said, man, that
stuff's dead. It's not the same group. And he goes, no no no, just do it. So
I turned to Nick and Guy and Steve and I said look, I'll just make something
up. Just follow me the best you can. And Steve lays down on his back in the
vocal booth, and pulls the mike out on top of him. And he has a bottle of
scotch in there, with a glass and a bit of ice in it. That's where the title
comes from, he's looking through the bottom of the glass up at the light. So
I just started off on this sort of outrageous psychedelic thing, just making
up a riff. And Nick and Guy followed me like it was telepathy. I don't think
I even told them what key I was in. Steve made up the lyrics right on the
spot. He was super-depressed, and that's what the song was about, this
alcoholic depression, just looking through the bottom of the scotch glass.
And the record company just loved it. Steve and I and the rest of the guys
thought, jeez, there was no thought put into it or plan or anything. So we
just went home shaking our heads. And I think the next day, the manager said
that Steve was fired, and he was out, they were going to send him back.
PT: You had a reunion in the 80s?
GC: We had a reunion back in the '80s sometime at their old high school.
Greg had a videotape going and everything, but he just messed it up, pushed
the wrong button, and it didn't work, or else we'd have had it all on
videotape. It was quite funny, because Rick [Moe] hadn't played drums since
all that time. But we got together and rehearsed, and it was like nobody had
ever been away. The same magic was still there. And the same things started
happening again. I hadn't been sick in years, and all of a sudden, by the
time the gig had come around, I had this horrendous cold just like I was
back in England. Greg joined us and again he was the prankster and the clown
of the band. And then Steve started getting antsy, he didn't want to play
bass, he wanted to play guitar. Rick had an argument with him, said, well,
do what you're supposed to do, play bass. It was exactly the same, we fell
right into the old groove. It was just like we never broke up.
PT: Are you in touch with any other members of the Misunderstood? If so,
what are they up to?
GC: I've completely lost touch with everyone. I don't have Greg’s address.
Rick, as far as I know, is in Bangkok. Steve I've lost touch with. Last I
heard, he was still in the Riverside area. Rick Moe has his own construction
business up north somewhere. Tony Hill I've completely lost touch with. I
got into country and western in the ’70s and was doing fairly well in
California, till the drunk driving laws came in. Then all the bars closed
down, and that's when I decided to move over here [Auckland, New Zealand].
Just about the same situation is happening now here. There's hardly any live
venues any more. I'm working as much as anybody, but two, three gigs a week,
is considered a lot. I work with N.Z. country artist Al Hunter - do a lot of
TV & radio ads and session work on countless albums by other artists. I’m
still out there trying to do stuff, and it’s not over yet. I’ve come up with
a nine-string archtop jazz-like guitar, steel, with a special tuning which
gets all these chords - ninths, sevenths, diminished augmenteds - out of one
static lap steel tuning. That’s never been heard of before. They said it
couldn’t be done.
PT: How do you feel about the reissues of your material? Does it come as
a surprise to you that they have generated an avid cult following, since the
group was largely overlooked when it was around?
GC: Yes and no. I think it's kind of neat in a way. I don't want to back
track and go back to that now. I think it made its point, and that's
basically what we wanted. That vibe and that feeling, we wanted people to
know that that existed, and there were people thinking that way. Of course,
we didn't get rich out of it, and we didn't become famous or anything like
that, or any of the other trappings that other groups have got. But I think
our main objective was achieved, to some degree. So that makes me happy. It
wasn't completely overlooked. It wasn't that we were so much overlooked when
we were around. It was just that nobody knew we existed! The people that
heard us couldn't overlook us. We were just too different.
Richie Unterberger talked to Glenn Campbell during February of 1997.
Editor: Phil McMullen, (c) Ptolemaic Terrascope 1997 |
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