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On
January 1st, 1973, the very first New Years Rockin' Eve was
aired. It was actually called, "Three Dog Night's New Years
Rockin' Eve." Up until that time it had been big band
leader, Guy Lombardo, that was the traditional New Year's
Eve host on television. Thinking back on it, I think we
pre-taped it in November, before we went on our tour of the
Pacific. Dick Clark synched it in, to coincide with his
Times Square broadcast from New York City. It was quite a
show. Lots of fun. We had Al Green, Blood Sweat and Tears,
Billy Preston and Helen Reddy on the show with us. It was
done onboard the famous old cruise liner the Queen Mary.
What a beautiful ship it is, too. While walking the decks at
night, I was reminded of an earlier time, the 1930's or
1940's. I expected to see Humphrey Bogart or William Powell
come around the corner in a trench coat at any moment.
Wonderful ambience. I have a VHS tape from that night and
maybe, in time, I will post a quicktime movie of some
excerpts. For now, below is a shot of the tv on the night of
broadcast showing me and Chuck. We were performing "Pieces
of April."
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The
end of 1972 brought about the first change in the
band's personnel. After returning from Hawaii, Joe
Schermie was no longer a band member. This came as
quite a blow to me; it was like losing my left arm.
In my opinion, Joe was integral to the chemistry,
but problems arose that were apparently
unresolvable.Out of respect and admiration for all
involved, I don't think it proper to go into
details about it.
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Besides,
it would only be my perspective and I'd surely get
something wrong in telling the specifics of it.
I'll just have to let it go by saying what a great
bass player and music man Joe Schermie was. I'll
always be indebted to him for the musical rocks we
turned over together. He'll always be my
brother.
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Joe
Schermie
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JACK
RYLAND
We
held auditions at a rehearsal studio in Hollywood for a new
bass player. When it was all said and done, a fine young
bass player named Jack Ryland was our choice. Besides being
a good musician, Jack was a sweetheart of guy. Although my
loyalty will always be to Joe Schermie, as the original
bassist in our group, Jack and I became best of friends in
no time. A very tender person with a quick wit, Jack was
always fun to work with. We even went camping and fishing
together a few times. Jack, 22, had been a member of the
band backing Mac Davis and Helen Reddy on a recent
joint-tour of the country. Earlier, he'd played as a sideman
with Lou Rawls, Carla Thomas, Wolfman Jack and Albert
Collins and for a time was a member of Seven, a group formed
by former Steppenwolf members, Jerry Edmonton and Goldy
McJohn. Jack Ryland turned to music at the age of 12, moving
from drums to guitar bass. A year later, he was part of a
group called "Boundaries," made up of musicians, 10-13 years
old, who scored a modest hit with a single, "Raving Mad."
Below is a picture of Jack. I always called him "Little
Jackie Ryland," said with an Irish accent.
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Jack
Ryland
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A
funny thing that I remember about Jack is that when his bass
strings would get "dead" sounding from age, instead of
buying a new set of bass strings, he would just take the old
ones off the bass and boil them in some water with a touch
of salt to make the water boil quicker. This would remove
all the "finger funk" and corrosion from the strings and
they would sound brand new again. I doubted him, but the
proof was in the pudding. It worked for him. Also, Jack had
a bass rig (amplifier/speaker) that was the best I've ever
heard ... in a small room. It was a Cerwin-Vega speaker
cabinet with a reverse mounted 18" speaker, powered by a
Gallien Kruger (GMT) amplifier. His tone settings were such
that you could hear his fingers on his strings, which
produced a wonderful edge to go with the extra bottom bass
tone that the speaker cabinet was made to reproduce. In the
previous sentence I said "in a small room" because it
sounded particularly great in rehearsal rooms. Unbelievable,
really. At a big venue, it had too much of a bottom end
(bass) sound to it. Joe Schermie's old rig of 3 or 4 Bruce
bass cabinets with 2 - 15" JBL self powered speakers in each
cabinet, was the best I've heard for on stage. Hartke is
cool, as well. Of course this was the "old days of rock n
roll." This was before bands figured out that you don't need
a wall of amplifiers to get a wall of sound. Still, us old
guys love a wall. Nyuk. I hear that the Doors had 57
Acoustic amplifiers (a wall) on stage at the Hollywood Bowl
back in the good ol' days. Greenspoon was there. He says
it's so, therefore ... DONE. Fact! End of story. (He loves
when I refer to him as "the source of all that is true and
unchallengeable.")
Getting
back to Jack Ryland, "Little Jackie" was a wonderful person
that I miss a lot. His death in 1996, due to depression that
overcame him, hit me very hard. I had just seen him months
earlier, when we had played in Lake Tahoe. Jack was living
and playing music in Reno. He made the trip up to South
Shore just to see us one night, but had to get back for his
own gig later. In fact, here's a picture from that night.
The very last time I ever saw my good friend Jackie. A
wonderfully talented, personable,and tender
person.
Jackie
and I used to get really stupid on planes when traveling
together. I had mentioned something to him once about
chickens and how they are running a total bluff, apparently
not even knowing what's standing right in front of them.
Being a semi-rural dude, I'd start making chicken sounds,
the kind they make when they're not completely going off
with a full-blown crow, like a rooster. More like the, "just
walking in the barnyard, making a throaty scratchy sustained
kind of sound" and then, finally breaking into a "buh-caw
cluck cluck." This is very hard to explain in writing. It
got to be a routine with Jack and me. We'ed phone each other
at a hotel, room to room, when the person picked up the
phone and said "hello," the caller wouldn't answer. Instead,
we would start that quiet croaking, scratchy, pre-clucking
sound that a chicken makes. Of course, we knew who had to be
on the other end of the line. In later years, after my
daughters, Natalie and Layne were born, Jack would call and
leave a message on the answering machine for me. One time,
Natalie came to me and said, "Dad! Somebody left a chicken
on the answering machine. Who is that?" I fell out and knew
immediately who it was. He didn't even say his name, but it
was Jack. I called him back with more of the same. "So," you
say, "this is how rock people pass their time?" I suppose it
was so for "Little Jackie Ryland" and Mikey.
You
should see Jack's son, Jason. Talk about a chip off the old
block. Jason looks so much like him. The picture below was
taken in the Bourbon Orleans hotel, in the French quarter of
New Orleans in 1973.
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