Hey Baby, They’re Playing Our Song: A Conversation with Carl Giammarese

There probably isn’t anything more British than the name Buckinghams. Immediately visions of straight-faced and stiff-postured palace guards in their large black hats and bright red coats and union jacks spin through your head. However, between 1965 to 1970, there was nothing at all British about The Buckinghams. When five guys from Chicago, Illinois – Carl Giammarese, Nick Fortuna, Marty Grebb, Dennis Tufano and John Poulos – took the British-sounding name for their band, they suddenly moved from their parents’ basements to, according to Billboard Magazine, “the most listened to band in America.” From Chicago night clubs to the Ed Sullivan stage, The Buckinghams fused together sixties pop with Chicago’s trademark brass sound, and created some of the decade’s most beloved music. Acting as secret agents against the British Invasion, The Buckinghams became one of North America’s premier pop bands, soaring to the top of the Billboard charts five times with hits like Kind of a Drag; Hey Baby They’re Playing Our Song; Mercy, Mercy, Mercy; Don’t You Care and Susan. Over forty years later The Buckinghams are still performing in venues all over North America. The lineup has changed over the years, but Nick Fortuna and Carl Giammarese, along with the help of new members Bob Abrams, Tom Scheckel and Bruce Soboroff, still keep the music of The Buckinghams alive into the current century and the group has been as prolific as ever. With a brand new original album, Reaching Back, being released, as well as an upcoming book on the history of the band, The Buckinghams are a favorite on the classic rock concert circuit.

Not long ago I was fortunate enough to become acquainted with Carl Giammarese. Acting as the group’s lead guitarist in the 1960’s, in the current lineup Carl has moved out front to become lead singer, front man and the creative force behind the band. With a career that has spanned over four decades, Carl has done it all. From his Buckinghams’ success, Carl became part of a successful acoustic duo, Tufano and Giammarese, and even worked as a jingle performer before The Buckinghams’ successful rebirth in the 1980’s.

In his long career Carl has seen many sides of the music industry, and as a result has become a seasoned veteran of the rock n’ roll journey, with stories to tell and lessons to teach. Talking to Carl is like listening to history. As one of the “nice guys” of the music industry, there is a lot to be learned from Carl’s story. From his early days in Chicago, to his rise to the top of the pops, to playing not one, but two, presidential inauguration balls, including this year’s historical inauguration of President Barack Obama, Carl Giammarese has been keeping the pop sounds of the 1960’s alive, while keeping a sense of creativity and integrity that is rarely achieved. Come as I talk to Carl about The Buckinghams, the 60’s and beyond as
 

CONFESSIONS OF A POP CULTURE ADDICT PRESENTS

HEY BABY THEY’RE PLAYING OUR SON:

A CONVERSATION WITH CARL GIAMMARESE

Sam: So how many years have you been involved in the music industry altogether, Carl?

Carl: Well, gosh, it’s hard to believe it’s been this many years, but I’ve been in the music industry since 1964 and with The Buckinghams since 1965. Myself and Nick Fortuna, we’ve known each other and been together since 1964 when we formed a band in the Chicago suburbs called The Centuries. It was a four- piece group with myself, Nick Fortuna, my cousin Jerry Elarde on drums and Curt Bachman on bass and the four of us got together. We were a basement band and just started playing, and it was like three guys playing through one amplifier. That was the beginning for me. It was a great time to be around Chicago. The music scene was really starting to take off and what was great was that there were so many great venues to play at the time. We had many different dances and teen hops and beat clubs and the Holiday ballroom was our favorite. So most of the groups that were just starting up knew each other so I got to know these guys from a group called The Pulsations. Eventually The Centuries broke up. Our bass player, Curt Bachman, quit and I kept getting offers from the guys in The Pulsations, so I quit The Centuries and joined them. At the time [The Pulsations] was myself and Dennis Tufano and John Poulos on drums and then Curt Bachman, who quit The Centuries to join another band, joined us. But he was a flighty guy and was always looking for something else, and he quit us about six months before Kind of a Drag broke really big. But anyway, Nick Fortuna had picked up the bass in the meantime and he joined us. So when Nick Fortuna came in, it became sort of the nucleus of the band. We had a keyboard player named Dennis Miccolis. We won an audition for a TV show called All Time Hits on WGN Television. This was in 1965. They liked the band, but they didn’t care for the name at all and the British Invasion was happening and they wanted something more contemporary. Something that sounded more right for the time, We became friends with a security guard that worked for WGN named John Opager. John was a pretty out-there guy and pretty cutting edge for the time and he kind of knew what was happening and was a little older than us. So he came up with the name The Buckinghams. He threw a couple of names at us and The Buckinghams was the one that stuck and we couldn’t believe at the time that nobody was using it.

Sam: Did you get a lot of people at the beginning of your careers expecting that you guys were a British band?

Carl: Yeah. That definitely happened. We started doing the show with the name The Buckinghams, and we really jumped right into the whole Carnegie Street look. We were wearing matching suits in the first stages, but then we got some real Edwardian-cut suits. Then what added to it was that a year or so later after that was that our road manager, Peter Shelton, was British, too. So the first person that people would meet was our road manager with an English accent, and then with a name like The Buckinghams, people assumed we were a British band. The first time we were out in LA to do a TV show we did The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and we walked out on the set to run through our first song and the whole set was decorated with British flags. They thought we were a British band. They had fish and chips and the whole nine yards in the dressing room. We were just a bunch of Chicago guys that wanted some pizza.

Sam: So how did All Times Hit catapult The Buckinghams to fame?

Carl: Well we started doing the WGN show which was a thirteen-week contact and it was sort of a hit parade show and we were the token rock band, and whatever was on the top forty that week, we’d pick two or three songs and perform them for the show. And we got a ton of exposure from that because WGN was a syndicated station. People could pick it up around the country. That lead us to a recording contract with USA Records, which was a Chicago-based record label.

Sam: Now Kind of a Drag hit the top of the charts rather quickly, didn’t it?

Carl: Yeah, we built up quite a big following in Chicago. I mean, we were playing a lot. We were jumping around from different venues around the city and different dances. When our manager Carl Bonafede got us the recording contract with USA Records, we went into the old Chess Studios and started recording sides, we were mainly at that point a cover band. Our whole show was covered material. So we were recording cover songs as singles. But we were looking for an original song and Carl Bonafede hooked up with a guy he knew who was writing songs named Jim Holvay. Jim was playing in a big show band called The Mob, but he was writing songs that weren’t right for The Mob, which was kind of a funk soul band. So Carl Bonafede approached him and he said “I’ve got this song.” I think Carl might have woken him up one day, because he did a recording for us, strumming it on an electric guitar that wasn’t even plugged in and just sang the song real slow. But Kind of a Drag had something special about it, and Carl Bonafede brought it to us and we started rehearsing it in my parents’ basement and I remember my mother coming down and saying “Hey. That’s a great song. That’s going to be a hit. I can tell.” We were hoping. We thought it was a really cool tune. So when we went into the studio and recorded it and Dan Belloc, who was the owner of the Holiday Ballroom and who was sort of financing and producing us, had an idea to put horns on the recording. He had a band. He was a big band leader and he got his horn guy Frank Tesinsky to come in and do an arrangement. The arrangement was heavy on trombones. We didn’t even think about it. We weren’t a horn band. If you listen to the Kind of a Drag album we sound more like a garage band. The funny thing is that we never had a horn section in the 60’s. Even after the hits started coming we never did a performance with a horn section. Only on the record. We never seemed to miss it, and the audience never seemed to question it. Of course, those were the days when the audience screamed so loud that you couldn’t hear anyway.

Sam: Do you remember where you were when you heard that Kind of a Drag had hit #1?

Carl: I don’t remember where I was when it hit #1 but I remember the first time I heard it on the radio. We were actually rehearsing at my parents’ house, and we were in the basement and I remember my Dad running down and saying “It’s on the radio! They’re playing it! They’re playing it right now!” We all ran upstairs standing around the radio and just listening to it and we were just really excited. It reminded me of that scene in that movie The Thing You Do. It was really an exciting feeling and at that point we didn’t realize the magnitude or how big it was going to become.

Sam: Well after Kind of a Drag hit, you had another five top ten hits.

Carl: We had five in the top five and then seven that charted. It happened very quickly in a short span of time, because Kind of a Drag was released in December of 1966 and by January of 1967 it was a number one record, and then our last top ten record, Susan, was in 1968.

Sam: What’s it like to be going from rehearsing in your parents’ basement, to overnight stardom?

Carl: It was kind of a blur because it happened in such a short period of time and so much was going on. All of a sudden we went from a local band rehearsing in our parents’ basement to the national spotlight and we went out on tour. It was weird. Your friends and people you knew said that we changed, but in fact they changed. But we weren’t around in Chicago much at that time. A strange thing happened. When Kind of a Drag hit we were sort of in a transaction period. We had just fired our keyboard player, Dennis Miccolis and we were looking for a new keyboardist. [Kind of a Drag] was the last song that we were under contract for USA with. So we were without a record deal or a keyboard player, and we had the number one record in the country. I guess it was a good position to be in. So that’s when we met James William Guercio who had a management partnership with Gary Ebbins. It was Ebbins and Guercio, and Guercio was a Chicago guy who went out to LA and he became our manager and producer. Great producer and a very talented guy but he didn’t have much of a personality and didn’t know how to relate to the guys in the band. What happened, just to give you the darker side of this, was that it was a little scary because we were entering areas that we weren’t that familiar with. You’ve got to remember that we were a group of eighteen- or nineteen-year-old kids and don’t know much of anything, but we did realize that we got really lucky with Kind of a Drag, but how do you keep it going and how do you prevent yourself from becoming a one-hit wonder? We realized that there were some shortcomings that, as hard of a worker as Carl Bonafede was, he just didn’t have the ability to take us beyond the borders of Chicago and the Midwest so we were looking for someone else. And the same thing with USA Records. I’ll say this until today, even though Kind of a Drag was a million seller, it probably could have sold three times as much if the record company had been Columbia, with the distribution they had. USA really got caught with their pants down. They were not prepared with the magnitude of what a hit that song was to try to keep up with it. But being in the position we were in, and we had major record labels approaching us, so we went with the Guercio and Ebbins management, and then there was a friend of ours who was a promotion man for Columbia Records named Jim Scully, who approached us, and they brought us over to Columbia. So by the beginning of 1967 we found ourselves in New York City signing with Columbia Records and in the studio recording Don’t You Care.

Sam: So how did the sudden fame change your life?

Carl: It was a blur because in 67 we played over three hundred dates that year. We were constantly on the road. We didn’t have a chance to smell the roses or know what the heck was going on. We were out there playing in different tours and individual dates on our own. Dates with The Who and The Beach Boys tours and a lot of these package tours. That whole year was all just touring and trying to get back to New York and record some more sides and going back on the road. It was scary too because being at that age and not being that far away. In the early days we used to jump in our Dodge van with our equipment and the guys would pick me up at school and we’d drive as far as Aberdeen, South Dakota to play a gig and then drive back, but never on a major national scene, and getting on airplanes and flying around the country, and playing dates and getting that kind of response. It was quite a ride.

Sam: Well you shared gigs and tours with a lot of my favorite musical groups including Gene Pitney, The Who and Beach Boys. I was wondering if you could share any stories of working with those people. I mean, The Who was actually opening for you guys.

Carl: Yeah. I think we were in Kansas City. The Who did open, but they were just starting. They weren’t a super group yet. I think My Generation was out but it wasn’t very well known yet. They played before us, and we closed, and they just about destroyed half the equipment on stage and they had to scramble to find some microphones that worked so that we could go on. But I remember going out and hanging out with Keith Moon and Pete Townsend. The following afternoon we were visiting the radio station, and we were invited to come up and do an on-air thing, and The Who weren’t invited, but we invited Pete Townsend and Keith Moon to come up with us and those guys were pretty mischievous and pretty crazy. The radio station was giving away a sitar as part of a contest they were having, and Keith Moon proceeded to take that thing and he ended up breaking it and I remember the dj saying “I’ll never play another Who record! I’ll never play another Who record on this radio station!” Well, right after that they became one of the biggest bands there ever was and I’m sure they played every Who record that came out. But they were pretty wild and crazy guys. I remember that the other two guys, Roger Daltry and John Entwistle, were more laid back. The Gene Pitney tour, which was a month long tour, was with Gene Pitney, The Music Explosion, The Easybeats and The Happenings. The Easybeats were pretty crazy guys. We became great friends with them and they were easy to get along with, but they were always fighting amongst themselves, I remember. They’d argue and start throwing punches at each other. It wouldn’t be unusual to see the bass player come up on stage with a black eye. Gene Pitney was an incredible singer, but we were on tour buses and he’d get together with the guys and gamble. He was a card player and he would take everybody’s money. I remember an incident once where he was performing and he walked out on stage, and beyond the stage was an orchestra pit, and the pit was covered with a canvas, and it was right level with the stage, and he walked too far, and on the canvas, and broke right through the canvas and down to his waist, and continued singing. He didn’t drop a note or anything. It was hilarious to see it happen. Then you had the tours with the Beach Boys. Dennis Wilson was a pretty wild and crazy guy. Dennis would run hot and cold. One day he could be the nicest guy in the world and the next day he would want to kill you. We would play these concerts and we’d get into a town and it would be us, The Beach Boys and sometimes we’d pick up a local band as an opening act. I remember this one drummer from a local band asked permission to use Dennis Wilson’s drums and he was pretty amiable about it, but in the middle of their show, we didn’t realize that the group had kind of a Who act and the drummer started kicking the drums over and Dennis Wilson went nuclear and ran out on stage in the middle of the show and started punching this guy. But they sounded fabulous back then. Carl Wilson was one of my favorites and of course Brian Wilson is still touring today. It is hard to believe that he is the Wilson who survived.

Sam: Did you guys get your share of groupies? What was it like having all the screaming girls at your gigs?

Carl: We thought it was amusing. I remember once performing and the girls were screaming and going nuts, and all of a sudden I looked to my left and there was Nick Fortuna being dragged towards the front of the stage by two girls, and he’s on the floor and they actually tore the sleeves off of his coat. But sometimes it was pretty scary. I remember we were doing an autograph signing at a record store in New York City and the fans were just overwhelming and pushing up against the table, and finally it got out of hand and into a frenzy and we had to escape from the store and we were running down the street and they were chasing behind us. It was scary. You get a couple of hundred teenage girls and they can be pretty strong. And we ran into a hardware store and begging the owner to lock the door, and we were hiding out in there until we could get some security. But most of the time it was pretty amusing. It was a fun and exciting time period and most of the time it was like we were living in A Hard Day’s Night. It was fun.

Sam: Now as the 60’s pushed on, the rock sound started to evolve into a more psychedelic direction and The Buckinghams didn’t really go down that path. Did you find it difficult to evolve?

Carl: Yeah. There were a lot of things that were difficult because we were known as a pop group, like the Beach Boys and The Association. So it wasn’t easy for us to develop and change and do new things. Columbia was holding us back, too, because they wanted to hear Kind of a Drag over and over again. You couldn’t really do too much. I remember we were really excited about recording the album Portraits and we thought that it was going to be our Sgt. Pepper. It was the first recording ever that we did where the band was so involved in it. When we did Time and Charges, listening to it today I’m really proud of it now and there was some great production on it, but we were trying to play catch-up at that time. We did our first single with Columbia, Don’t You Care, and they wanted an album right away. We didn’t have a lot of input on that album. Guercio was getting songs. Some from Jim Holvey. Some that he wrote. Whatever he told us to do, we would do at that point. We would go into the studio and cut a basic track and rehearse the tune a little bit. There wasn’t much guitar work for me to do on that album because of the kind of songs they were. Dennis Tufano was learning songs right on the spot. The album came together really fast and we didn’t have a lot of time. But when we finally got the opportunity to get a break on our schedule and decided to come out to LA and rent the house and really dig in and set up a rehearsal room and work on everything, and really try to change our sound somewhat into a little bit of a direction. We were really proud of Portraits and were very much involved. We played a lot of guitar on it, and the vocals, and we got into the writing on it. Especially Marty Grebb. We were expecting good things from that album and it didn’t happen. Our audience still wanted to hear Kind of a Drag and Don’t You Care. Susan and Hey Baby, They’re Playing Our Song are two cuts on the album, but they really don’t really fit into what the other material on the album is.

Sam: Well, at the end of Susan you do go into a bit of a psychedelic meltdown.

Carl: Yeah. What happened was when we recorded Susan, we recorded the track, the vocals and a couple of little overdubs and then Guercio had left so many bars of click track with nothing in it at the end of the song and we kept asking him what he was doing here. What’s going on? There’s nothing but space in the recording. He said “Don’t worry about it. I have this idea. You guys will hear it and it’ll be great.” So we went back out on tour and we were in upstate New York and we received an acetate of the recording. We had some fans that we got to know pretty well and we went to their house and put it on their record player and Susan played, and we thought it sounded great and all of a sudden it gets to this part in the record and we were going “What’s that? What’s going on?” We took the needle off the record and played it again. We thought there was a flaw in the test pressing at first. We hadn’t any idea what was going on. Then we realized it was a part of the record when it stops and the “Love, love, love” part comes on. It reminded us of the Beatles’ A Day in the Life and at first we didn’t really like it. We didn’t embrace it very much, and a lot of radio stations edited that part out. It’s kind of interesting today. I’ve sort of grown to like it.

Sam: What were the circumstances of The Buckinghams coming to an end?

Carl: Well I would have to say that there wasn’t probably one thing that you can put your finger on that broke up the band. I would have to say several things came about. One was that the music scene was changing quite a bit and we were having trouble. We felt our singles being left behind a little bit. We weren’t getting the support we needed from the record label. We fired Guercio around the beginning of ’68 because we had a dispute over publishing. We started to realize the importance of the publishing and the money that was involved. When we did the Portraits album he verbally agreed to share the publishing with us and he didn’t, so we wound up firing him. We were a little bit arrogant and feeling that we could do anything, not realizing his connection was so strong with Columbia. When we fired him our relationship with Columbia deteriorated somewhat. We did In One Ear and it wasn’t that successful and things were falling apart a little bit. We had a drug bust that happened. A couple of our roadies had a couple of joints and [the media] turned it into a big thing – The Buckinghams busted for marijuana. That didn’t help the situation in ’68. We started to pull in different directions musically. Myself and Dennis Tufano were really starting to do a lot of writing and becoming the singer/songwriter mode. It was the time period that James Taylor was happening, Jackson Browne and the Eagles. It was around 1970. That was starting to come to the surface. So we were writing and we wanted to do something different. So it was just the times were changing and it seemed like the right time to break up the band. Marty Grebb, our keyboard player who was the most musical force in the band at the time, decided to quit. We tried to go on but our hearts weren’t in it. So, by 1970 we decided to split up. Dennis and I became Tufano and Giammarese and we found ourselves back in Chicago playing in small clubs and putting together an act with original material.