The Raiders’ backroom boys. Producer/co-writer Terry Melcher (above); manager Roger Hart and publicist Derek Taylor (right).


toward guitar-oriented rock, the songs provided less for him to do. In the studio, as often as not, the keyboard parts had been played by Volk, Melcher or (occasionally, when a session was booked and the band was on tour) session musicians. “Paul was not always comfortable in the studio,” Hart notes. “He loved being onstage.” Volk stresses that although “Things in the studio moved too slowly for him, Revere could rock his ass off.” Volk offers, “If you really want to hear Paul play, listen to those B-sides on the new compilation.” As Revere told Ed Osborne, “I was [Terry Melcher’s] worst nightmare. I’d always been the leader of the band –I was the guy. It was my band and I ran that son-of-a-bitch like a sergeant. And all of a sudden, I had a general over me.”


The ’67 album Revolution! – recorded with a new line-up – was the last Lindsay-Melcher collaboration, save the left-field A Christmas Present… And Past LP. Lindsay recalls that he and Melcher developed that holiday album as “combination Vietnam war protest


and man’s-inhumanity-to-man observation.” He chuckles that the resulting music turned out to be very dark, and not exactly what the label had wanted. “It wasn’t exactly our most commercial enterprise,” Lindsay admits.


STILLHAPPENING


Also that year, Revere and Lindsay went to Memphis and filmed a pilot for a planned TV show called Treasure Of ’67, but that project failed to materialise. A local station


“I was Terry Melcher’s worst nightmare. It was my band and


I ran that son-of-a-bitch like a sergeant.


And all of a sudden, I


had a general over me.” Paul Revere


(WHBQ) had just installed colour cameras, so the pair produced an off-the-cuff programme in hopes of selling sponsors on the idea. Lindsay laughs as he recalls the “last-minute” nature of the show, complete with “spray-painted paper plates” decorating the wall and naughty banter that could never make it onto TV. At one point in the programme, Lindsay turns to Revere, who’s wearing a frog sock puppet on his hand, and says, “Get the frog out of my face!”


Meanwhile, Hart had suggested to Dick Clark’s people that they should develop a show for Revere and Lindsay, based on, in his words, “Whatever’s happening in music.” What came out of those meetings was the weekly programme Happening (and later a companion daily show called It’s Happening).


Paul Revere


Their co-host on some of these was a former co-star from their WTAI days, solo artist Keith Allison. The Raiders and Allison had


Mark Lindsay 49


toured together for years; Allison would open the show, and then return mid-set to be backed by Revere’s band. Allison had also contributed as a session musician to the singles ‘Ups And Downs’ and ‘Him Or Me – What’s It Gonna Be?’ In ’68 Revere approached Allison to join the group on bass. “Be in the studio next week,” Allison recalls Revere telling him. He showed up in time to play on the single, ‘Cinderella Sunshine’.


By ’68 the band settled into a line-up of Lindsay and Revere plus southerners Freddy Weller on guitar, Keith Allison on bass, and Joe Correro Jr on drums. While the ’67 album Goin’ To Memphis was a Raiders album in name only (Lindsay recorded all the songs – except the single ‘Peace Of Mind’ – in Memphis with producer Chips Moman and his stable of sessioners), the next three – Something Happening (’68), Hard ’N’ Heavy (With Marshmallow) (’69) and Alias Pink Puzz (’69) – were more band- centred projects. “On Hard ’N’ Heavy, it’s all us,” says Allison. “That’s all Freddy, Joe and


Photos courtesy of Roger Hart


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