THE HARD STUFF ERGOT AND LOUD GUITARS!


SAINTE ANTHONY’S FYRE may not be a name familiar to most but we at Shindig! Towers are aiming to change all that. Savona ‘Bob’ Sharples, the drummer for this wild, heavy three piece that put out one privately pressed album on their own Zonk label in 1970 (now a $1000+ collectable), spoke to AUSTIN MATTHEWS to set straight the rumours and myths that have been written about this mysterious band over the years.


B


ob was raised in England but moved to New Jersey when he was 10 and played in various bands before hooking up with SAF lead guitarist and singer Greg ‘Ohm’ Onushko and their first bassist


Rich Helmke. Greg got wind that local promoter Jean Francis was putting together Motown-style bands and soon they wound up practising in her basement. Explains Bob, “We were supposed to get a front man, organ and a horn section. We were in the basement of her office practicing when along came the music of Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Moby Grape and Jefferson Airplane. It was a happening. We started buying Marshall stacks and blew Jean out of her third floor office. This was the very beginning of Fyre.”


The wild psychedelia of the music was typified in their choice of band name. “At this time Greg was walking around with the book The Day of St Anthony’s Fire by John G Fuller. In France in 1951 hundreds of respectable towns people went totally mad on a single night after the rye bread they were making had a mould on it called ergot (a base form of lysergic acid, also the base for LSD.) Greg picked the name after reading the book.”


The band had real chemistry and swiftly hit the road with a new management team. “Early Fyre was managed by Dickie Diamond (Patti Labelle & The Bluebelles’ manager). We used to open for Kool & The Gang and Patti Labelle. We would load the bottom cabinets of all our Marshall stacks with mikes which


would come out of a monster PA blowing back hippie beads and pot smoke. The audience loved us – great times, groupies and lots of acid.”


Indeed it was as a live band that Sainte Anthony’s Fyre truly excelled at winning fans wherever they went, whether playing their own shows, opening up for some big acts or gracing the festivals of the time. “Most of the concerts we played were open-air festivals. If not festivals it was college outdoor events. A lot of them were called “Be-Ins” for whatever agenda it was at the time. There are too many stories to be told about gigs! I remember for a while the crew would put a music stand on stage for Greg with a road map on it. When Greg would go into an extended guitar solo on


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