Paul Revere & The Raiders should dress!’” They rented the costumes and wore them for the second act of that evening’s show at The Lake Oswego Armory. It was a one- night rental, “just for a gag,” Lindsay says. But once onstage, “the whole tenor of the band changed. We were always crazy, but we became… insane.” The next time they played in Lake Oswego, sans costume, “the kids crowded around us and asked, ‘where are the outfits?’ ” From that point until the late ’60s, the band always performed in costume.


Jim Valley – then of The Viceroys – recalls first hearing of the group. “In ’64 we played in a place in seaside Oregon. We were supposed to have 800 kids, and instead we had 80. And we wondered what had happened, because our record ‘Granny's Pad’ was a big hit down there. Someone told us, “There's this group out of Portland; they're called Paul Revere & The Raiders. They wear three-cornered hats, they're wild and crazy, and the kids love 'em. They had a thousand kids at the club up the street.”


Asked if the band ever worried that Revolutionary garb would keep them from being taken seriously, Lindsay says that in those pre-hit days, “Our main stock in trade was our live shows. Whatever worked in a live show is what we wanted to do.” He does note that “I don’t think the Raiders will ever be voted into The Rock ’n’ Roll Hall Of Fame, because people don’t take the music seriously. They forget that we had some pretty good rock ’n’ roll records.”


THE RAIDERSTAKE LOS ANGELES


As one of Columbia Records’ earliest forays into rock music, the Raiders weren’t initially shown much attention or respect by label head Mitch Miller. Hart notes that “Miller was on the Andy Williams/Barbra Streisand side of things; that’s where his focus was.” Yet in a move somewhat unusual for the era, one side of the Raiders’ major-label debut, Here They Come, featured the group in live performance. Produced by Bruce Johnston, Here They Come managed to capture the excitement of the Raiders’ onstage set. The


second side included studio cuts that maintained that energy level, and those tracks featured new bassist Phil “Fang” Volk. By ’65 the most celebrated Raiders line-up was in place.


Volk’s entrance into the band had as much to do with his dancing prowess as his musical ability. Friends since childhood in Idaho, Volk and Levin used to “tear up the dance floor,” Volk says. “So we incorporated that, to excel in the band’s showmanship. We added a lot of sophisticated choreography, while playing in the pocket.” And rather than hiring an outside choreographer, the band relied on Volk and Levin to develop all of their patented moves.


The group migrated to Los Angeles and began a long and successful association with impresario Dick Clark. Clark launched a new daily TV program called Where The Action Is, and the Raiders were the “house band” for the show. For nearly two years the group would appear on television every weekday, lip-synching and clowning around in the manner of The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night.


47


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