insult got turned to injury when their music was overdubbed in favor of a snippet of a Mothers Of Invention song.


Caplan: “We were doing a lot of shows at The Electric Theatre in Chicago with groups like The Flying Burrito Brothers and other well-known acts back then. We became a favourite of Aaron Russo, the owner of the Theatre. When the film producers decided to


something of a return to their Distortions approach. ‘Feeling’ is a superb track that sounds like The Stooges circa ‘1970’ crossed with Blue Cheer. From there, the album goes somewhat south. There’s nothing really wrong with singer Mark Gallagher’s Jack Bruce-style, jazz rock vocal delivery, but listening to it sometimes makes you miss Denny Waite’s more innocent, straight-ahead rock ’n’ roll approach. There are attempts to re-work


The five-man Lightning: L-R: Caplan, Woodrich, Pershey, Stanhope, Roberts.


regional charts and ultimately got picked up by Cream’s label Atco, but the trio never managed to find a taker for a planned album.


Caplan explains why the single didn’t lead to a full-length release, and how the three-man White Lightning merged into the quintet Lightning: “Well for starters Atco picked up the single and we thought we would get good enough sales from that to warrant an LP


use the Theatre for that scene in the movie, Aaron told them he wanted to use us for the band that would be playing in the background on stage. We actually spent a whole day filming the scene and the movie company recorded all the songs that we played. We were pissed and really surprised when the movie came out and it was Frank Zappa on the soundtrack instead of us.”


Soon after the Medium Cool fiasco, Caplan and singer Waite decided to leave the band. This seems a shame now, as The Litter finally accepted a major label offer the following year, releasing Emerge on ABC/Probe in ’69.


“I left The Litter mostly over creative differences,” Caplan says now. “I was also jamming quite a bit at that time with a bass player named Woody Woodrich and we were really hyped on doing a three-piece group on the order of Cream. Woody is one of the co- writers on ‘(Under the Screaming Double) Eagle’. The Emerge album was quite a way off at that time so that was not even an issue when I left the group to form White Lightning with Woody. The Litter line-up for Emerge was Jim Kane on bass, Dan Rinaldi on rhythm guitar, Ray Melina on lead guitar and Mark Gallagher on lead vocals.”


Emerge has its moments of strength but is a wildly uneven record. The first two tracks are the best bits on the album. ‘Journeys’ opens things with some powerful raw energy, and is


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Buffalo Springfield’s ‘For What It’s Worth’ and the Bacharach-David penned ‘My Little Red Book’ – both come off as forced and lacking in basic rhythm. ‘Future Of The Past,’ written by bassist Kane, goes on for over 12 minutes and never gets much of anywhere.


In the meantime, Zippy Caplan had taken yet another musical turn of his own. After deciding to leave the band he formed the power trio White Lightning in ’68. Joined by drummer/vocalist Mick Stanhope and bassist


“The missed chance to sign to Elektra seems especially disappointing, as The Litter would have been perfect label mates of MC5 and The Stooges.”


Woody Woodrich, this outfit was clearly and heavily influenced by Cream, and didn’t bother to pretend otherwise. They reigned in Litter producer Kendrick, who penned the A- side of their debut single, ‘Of Paupers And Poets/William’. The song sounds amazingly like Cream with Neil Young singing, because Stanhope’s vocal style is so similar to Young’s. The 45 made some noise on the


with them, but they didn’t push the record and then dropped us.We were starting to get booked so much that we barley had time to even think about any further recording. When Pat Rains took over as our manager in ’70 he cut a deal with Pickwick for the LP and by then of course we had gone five-piece and changed the name to just Lightning.


“After satisfying ourselves with the three-piece group for over a year we started to realise that the material we were writing would be better suited if we had another instrument, as the three-piece line-up was becoming increasingly limited in what we could do. So Mick Stanhope went from singing lead and playing drums to becoming our stand-up vocalist and Ronn Roberts who would sit in with us periodically on guitar became our permanent second guitar player. Later when Mickey went up front he brought in a friend of his from Joliet, Bernie Pershey, to take his place on drums. Naturally we thought shortening the name to just Lightning fit the band and the situation better, we also wanted to make the distinction that this was in fact a newer version with a different sound.”


The refashioned act released an eight-song, self-titled album on Pickwick’s PIP imprint in ‘70. The Lightning album is very much of its time, alternating between chugging hard rockers and plaintive, meandering ballads. It has the lazy, open-spaces feel of Neil Young & Crazy Horse’s Everybody Knows This is


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