Raw, Rare, Well Done: The Rock and Roll Journey of Reed Kailing

Over the past five decades Reed Kailing has been living the ultimate rock and roll journey. Yet, in that five decades Reed has put on many different faces and personas. From the sound stage of Art Robert’s Swinging Majority with his band The Destinations, to animated fame as Frank Hardy in Filmation’s Hardy Boys bubblegum band, to the top forty sounds of The Grass Roots, to the Broadway stage playing Paul McCartney in Beatlemania and a brief stint touring with the legendary band Badfinger, Reed Kailing has had far more success and adventures then the average musician will have in a lifetime. However, that barely even scratches the surface of Reed’s rock n’ roll adventures. Late night jam sessions with John Lennon, escaping the fatal plane crash that killed Jim Croce via a flip of a coin, and literally having Baby Come Back stolen from him by 70`s one hit wonders Player helps spice up what has been an amazing career.  Raw, Rare, Well Done (2009)

This summer Reed is opening his musical archive and sharing his musical journey with the world through his brand new CD, Raw, Rare, Well Done. Containg eleven previously unreleased tracks recorded between 1977 and 1982 and another four tracks recorded in Nashville in 2008, Raw, Rare, Well Done features a number of guest musicians ranging from The Grass Roots` Warren Entner, Kiki Dee and Miami Vice star Don Johnson. More information on Reed`s CD can be found on his web-site at www.reedkailing.com.

Via my pet project of chronicling the history of The Hardy Boys, I recently came into contact with Reed Kailing. Easily the most prolific of the former members from the short lived, but well remembered, bubblegum group, over the last few months I have shared a number of conversations with Reed. His enthusiasm for music is addictive and over the course of three days we amassed nearly four hours of interview tape. Reed`s stories share both sides of the industry. One that can often be a magical place full of highs and joys, and another that can be cold and cruel full of backstabbing and death. Reed Kailing is the real deal, and through his journey the true face of the rock and roll is revealed. Come join Reed Kailing`s Rock and Roll Journey as

CONFESSIONS OF A POP CULURE ADDICT PRESENTS

RAW, RARE, WELL DONE:

THE ROCK AND ROLL JOURNEY OF REED KAILING

I spoke to Reed Kailing in May 2009 via telephone.

Sam: So lets go back to the very beginning Reed. What got you interested in music in the first place?

Young Reed performing his "Rick Nelson Show" in his basement.

Reed: As a kid I was a bit like Huckleberry Finn. I fished the Fox River at my grandmother’s house everyday and I was a little warrior. I made little bows and arrows and my mother would make me feathers out of cardboard backings from my Dad’s white starched shirts and send me out. I would daydream in school. The nuns were crazy and not nice. I really had a Huck Finn existence and I think that was one of the best things that happened to me. But back in ’56 I was walking along the sidewalk and I remember this kid named Jim Scary coming up and saying that there was this guy who was like the big thing. He sang Hound Dog. But when I moved to Shorewood, which is a suburb of Milwaukee, I became enamored by Ozzie and Harriet and Rick Nelson. It you go on the web-site you’ll see a picture of me with my grandmother’s crutches made into a guitar doing the Rick Nelson show in my basement. We’d have a guy underneath the stage playing Rick Nelson and we’d be lip synching. Duane Eddy got me going guitar wise. He had songs like 40 Miles of Bad Road. He created a guitar sound that was magnificent and I got hooked on that. Then I inherited my grandfather’s guitar. He was an Irish doctor out of Waterford. When a farmer wasn’t doing so good they’d call my grandfather, who would take a bottle of whiskey and his guitar and sing Irish folk songs. So I came from this musical background. But then it went further and I did the Everly Brothers. [Music] was so important to me. I was home alone and I’d put the record player on and I just got involved in music. It was better than a dog. It barked at me in all the right ways. That’s what got me going.

Sam: What was the first group you were with?

Reed: The first group I did was the Cleoatra Four, which was Latin for Beatles. In high school, in sophomore year, we put together a thing where we did I Want to Hold Your Hand and Twist and Shout for the American Field Service variety show. I was the only guy playing guitar and Fred Hadler was the only one playing drums and the other guys were just mimicking it. But from that night we were held over and they kept us there and Fred and I did Duane Eddy songs and whatever we knew, and that was the beginnings of what would become The Destinations. The Destinations would go on to do a lot of good things. We were Milwaukee’s local Beatles. Sam: When you were with The Destinations you played President Lydon Johnston’s daughter Lynda’s engagement party. Can you tell us a bit about that event?

Reed with The Destinations

Reed: Charles Robb, her fiancé, was from the Milwaukee area and they held it at the Milwaukee Athletic Club. It was pretty interesting. Imagine what the secret service must be like now? Well back then they really went over you. We won the statewide battle of the bands and that’s why we had all this media exposure, and we were clean cut and Beatleish. Lynda was kind of quiet and I was brought up to introduce myself and I went to shake her hands and [the secret service] approached me like if I was going to do some karate on her. One of the songs we sang and that I dedicated to her was And I Love Her by the Beatles. It was her favorite Beatles song and she was very appreciative and very kind. She said I sounded amazingly like Paul McCartney. But she was kind of cute. Lyndon Johnson was supposed to show up with his wife, but they got some alert from the secret service that [the event] was not sufficiently roomed. I mean, you have to remember that Kennedy had just been shot. It was a unique thing and a lot of fun and gave [The Destinations] some unusual exposure. That’s what leads us to record Hello Girl which became a pretty sizeable hit. I wrote that about Colleen Covert, who was my first love and we split up. Well The Destinations became huge and we segwayed down to Chicago and there was a radio personality named Art Roberts who had a TV show called The Swinging Majority and we were the house band on that show. Everybody did Art’s show because he was the program director for WLS Radio and he picked five records a week. If you were doing a concert in Chicago and you were asked to do his show and you decided not to, [Art would] pass your record. That’s where I met Michael Jackson and the Jackson Five. They were just little kids. I mean everybody did Art’s show. In fact, that’s where I met The Grass Roots for the first time. Well we did that show from five to six pm, and then we would jump in the car and go ninety miles north and play a gig in Wisconsin. We were making eight hundred bucks a week. We played all the mod clubs and made a fortune. Sam: Can you elaborate on the formation of The Hardy Boys for a bit? You were the first one contacted for the project, right?

Reed with The Hardy Boys

Reed: Yes. I was recognized on The Swinging Majority. What happened was after Art’s show, and when I quit The Destinations, I formed a band called Reed In His Own Rite. But because of Art’s show I got a call from a guy named Gayle Mathewson, who was Jerry Butler’s attorney, and the next day I got a call from Dunwich productions, which was from Bill Traut and Jim Golden, with Destination records. They said “Would you come on down. We want to put a demo together.” I said, “What’s this all about.” They said “It’s Frank and Joe Hardy and the F.W. Dixon books series” and I said “Oh. Okay.” I went to the interview, and Jim Golden, who was the owner of Destination Records, knew me from The Destinations and Hello Girl. They said to me “Do you know any guys who are blonde that can sing?” I said “Yeah. I do.” They said “Well, could you bring a picture of him in?” So Jeff Taylor was singing lead for the Messengers back in Milwaukee [The Messengers] lived in a house on the east side. Greg Jerressic, who was the band’s leader and money guy, played bass. Peter Barns was the lead guitar player. Jeff was a blonde haired, blue eyed skinny little guy, and was the lead singer and I kind of snuck in there and told Jeff this story. But Greg was very possessive. He ran the band. He had a recording studio in the house and everything was so anal that it was ridiculous. That’s what their demise was. There was no richness of naturality. So anyways, I got an 8X10 picture of Jeff and I got it down to Dunwich. So we went back and we did a demo called Namby Pamby written by Gary Loizzo. You know who Gary Loizzo was? He was the lead singer of the American Breed. So we did that and I’ll never forget that we came back here to the house and put it on the reel to reel and we were just so excited. So then they found Devon English, Nibs Soltysiak and Bob Crowder. They had auditioned a different black kid for the Hardy Boys drummer, but Jim Golden didn’t want him because when he filled out his name on the audition sheet he couldn’t spell Chicago. But our first album failed. It was a disaster.

Here Comes the Hardy Boys (1969)

Sam: Why was it a disaster? In what sense?

Reed: Oh. It was produced so poorly. I have nothing against him, but Jim Golden acted very arrogant and he had The New Colony Six. He had a few groups but he wasn’t the brains behind this label. Sam: Now you made a statement in an e-mail we exchanged that The Hardy Boys was not a real band. What do you mean by that?

Reed "recording" with the Hardy Boys - (left to right) Devon English, Reed, Jeff Taylor, Norbert "Nibs" Solystiak and Bob Crowder

With The Hardy Boys there was never ever that. It was manufactured. Jeff had to learn how to play bass and we had to bring a friend of his in to back him up. But I really got to give Jeff credit. He learned some bass lines. And Nibs almost never played tenor sax at all. Bob was a distinctive jazz drummer. He had a very light snare drum play. He was a jazz drummer. Devon English came out of the Playboy mansion, and she wiggled her way in there and her and Jeff were lovers and that was fine, but they were kind of…you know. I dunno. Well it was an “all against me” situation at one time. They [hassled] me because I liked Leonard Cohen. Jeff thought I was pretty stupid about that so on my birthday they bought me a book of Leonard Cohen poems. I thought Leonard was interesting as a poet. Well guess what! So did Bono!

Leonard Cohen caused tension within The Hardy Boys?

Sam: Well Leonard Cohen is one of my cultural heroes.

Reed: Yeah. And Leonard Cohen got into the rock n’ roll hall of fame. But see where I’m coming from? I was really not happy with Jeff and Devon calling me a lightweight for liking Leonard Cohen. Don’t get me wrong, but that’s why I left the band. It was not a band. A band is something where you are really kicking ass and looking at each other and making noise in a room that you can not want to live without. That’s a band. But when you’re in a room and its just boring as shit, it’s not good.

Sam: Do you have any resentment over your time with The Hardy Boys?

Reed: Well The Hardy Boys thing was just a passage. It was a way for me to get out of Milwaukee. I didn’t think anything about it. It was like; we’re going to use this patch of ground in Chicago. Somewhere where I really learnt a lot was going on the promotional tours through ABC TV and learning the workings of RCA records. I learnt so much there. Then my guns were loaded and my holsters were full and I went to LA and I knew what I was talking about. I would be talking to record people and I knew what I was talking about because on my resume was ABC/Filmation producers Norm Prescott, Lou Scheimer, and Hal Sutherland. By the way, [Presscott and Scheimer] praised me for leaving the contract early.

Reed Kailing and Jeff Taylor as Frank and Joe Hardy

Sam: When did you last see Jeff?

Reed: The last time I saw Jeff…well…my wife Penny and my daughter Alexandra and I have three hunter jumper horses with the circuit in Tennessee, Illinois and Indiana. Well we were at an awards dinner one night where my wife was granted high ratings on her horse riding skills, and I looked across the room and I thought “Oh my god!” He was a little heavier then I remembered him, but there was Jeff. Sam: Well Jeff’s wife is really involved with horses as well. Reed: Exactly. Well that’s why he was at the awards dinner. So I thought “God damn! This is great!” and it was a wonderful reunion. We talked for about five or ten minutes and that was about it. He was a bit shy, but then what do you have to really say? But we kind of small talked and it was great. I love Jeff. There’s no question about it. Everybody had their own little ego but I think more what the ego was, was fear because we were all involved in something [where we were wondering] “What are Golden and Traut going to do to us today.” Jeff, Devon and I were the principals. Nibs and Crowder not so much, although Bob to me…well…when I heard that he had died, and it was a false rumor, I was devastated. I was just saddened. What a nice soul. What a kind heart. You know what he was like? When he would be around in a group meeting with the principals, Bob was the guy who was sitting back and listening and thinking more. We talked a lot. Can I tell you a quick story about Bob?

Sam: Of course.

Reed: When we were going to play the Junior Miss Pageant, we had got a van and had left Chicago and had got to Nashville and I’ll never forget that we went to this restaurant and it was kind of an Applebees. We were walking up and this mean ass son of a bitch closed the doors and bars it with an axe handle and says “No niggers allowed.” We all looked at each other so we walked to a Travel Lodge and there were four or five marines sitting in there with a good looking waitress. So we decided to get lunch there and the waitress walks up and looks over at Bob and says “We’re booked.” Well Bob said something interesting which was “Maybe I should sit in the car and you can bring some food out to me.” Well I said “Bullshit.” You know where we ended up eating? At a downtown university at a little cubby stand with little stools. Then we went down to Birmingham, Alabama and we were staying at the Tutweller Hotel. Well I checked us in and we were put on the fifth floor because that was where I was told [by the owners] that that was where “niggers and musicians sleep.” So we went to Canterville, Iowa and we ordered out some cheeseburgers and they saw Bob and there were guys sitting in the booth and [the waitress] said something like “How long do you guys have to live.” And I asked “What?” And I’ll never forget this. There was these guys sitting in green backed booths and this one guy took his knife in his right hand and was putting it in his left hand and putting the point in his palm and twisting it and looking at me and Bob. Devon and Bob went back out to the car but Jeff stayed there with me. Nibs never got out of the car. I stuck it out and looked right back at this guy and stared him down. Our order took about an hour. They would not feed us. Finally I said “Time is time here and I could make some problems” and the guy behind the grill probably spit in our food. But we had to eat. We were starving. I remember walking out and putting my arms around Bob and saying “Never again.” But that’s what I mean! We were never a band. We weren’t handled like a band! We were sent out in a situation where…well…when you go on tour you kind of know what your getting involved in. But, adding injury we come back from Birmingham and we park in the parking lot of the building I lived in and I made the mistake of saying to a guy “Here’s ten bucks. Please watch the van.” We came back and my guitar was gone. Everything was stolen. So that was when I finally said screw this and I went to work for MC Distribution for $85 a week.

Reed was the last person known to see missing Hardy Boy member Devon English during a chance encounter in Los Angeles in the early 70s

Sam: Now Devon English is the only member of the Hardy Boys that is AWOL, but you are the last known person to have seen her. Can you tell us about that?

Reed: At that time I was with The Grass Roots. I was living in LA off of Sunset on Miller Drive and living across from Warren Entner. Well, there was a restaurant on Sunset Boulevard, right where Tower Records was kiddie corner. I had breakfast there every morning, and I walked up the street and there was this little Christian Science office and I looked inside and there was this girl with circular glasses like [Devon] always wore and she walked up to me and said “Reed.” I said “Oh my god! Devon! How are you?” She said “Oh, I’m doing this Christian Science thing.” I said “Are you okay?” because she looked a little feeble. She looked like she was really struggling. She said “I’m with Christian Science now.” I said “Devon, if you need anything I’m at 133 Miller Drive” but that was the last I ever saw her.

Sam: Let’s leave The Hardy Boys behind. Tell me how you got involved with The Grass Roots.

Reed: Well I met Warren Entner on Art Robert’s Swinging Majority. I really like Warren. Rob Grill is a very distant guy. He’s a very inward type. Well when I finished my stint with The Hardy Boys, I called a friend of mine named Fred Bohlander, who was a part of Dunwich Productions but was now on his own, and I said “Do I go to New York or do I go to LA.” He said “How many people do you know in New York?” I said “Not many.” Well he said “Well you know me out here.” So to make a long story short, we ended up moving to LA and ended up living in the Hollywood hills across the street from Warren Entner. Well he heard some of the demos I did back in Chicago with a guy I knew named Paul Christy. Meanwhile, Patti, my wife at the time, was working for Bob Ellis Silberstein who was married to Diana Ross, who as a matter of fact, was a client of his, and he was doing promotion for The Grass Roots. So one thing lead to another. The Grass Roots were not really a very tight band. The band was very very lax.

Sam: Well they seemed to have had a lot of member turn around over the years.

The Grass Roots circa 1972 - Warren Entner, Rob Grill, Virgil Webber, Joel Larson and Reed Kailing

Reed: Before I joined them Terry Furlong had just dropped out. Then this other guy named Brian Naughton who sort of looked like me to a degree. Well then Joe Pollard left and then they brought Ricky Coonce back, who was there original drummer. I love Ricky with all my heart, but he was the worst drummer I ever heard in my life. Just couldn’t hold a beat. We went off on a three day tour and they wanted as many original members but by Sunday afternoon I went up to Warren and said “We really got to talk about Ricky” and he said “I know. Don’t worry about it.” He had to tell Ricky it wasn’t going to work. So that’s when Joel Larson came in, and Joel was the absolute original drummer from when they were in San Francisco in 1967 before they recorded Where Were You When I Need You. But Warren and Rob were kind of lazy. They didn’t like to rehearse. When you got a band that’s not that tight it’s hard to do because you have to count on yourself to make things happen. But [getting involved with The Grass Roots] was kind of a fluke. I mean, I didn’t even own an electric guitar at the time. Warren bought me one. I wasn’t making a lot of money at the time, but I paid him back. We went down to Guitar Center on Sunset Boulevard and Warren bought me a Telecaster.

Sam: Now when you were with The Grass Roots, you were at the airport with Jim Croce during the last hours of his life. That’s a really amazing story. Would you mind talking about that?

On September 20th, 1973 The Grass Roots and Jim Croce flipped a coin to board an airplane in Louisiana. The Grass Roots lost the toss, but Croce and his band lost their lives.

Reed: That was in 1973. I can never remember the name of the airport but it was in Louisiana. I don’t remember where we were supposed to play but as I remember it, we flew into this little airport and got in there and it was a small airport. It was just tiny. Well there was only one plane, and then Jim Croce came in and he was going in a different direction. Well there was some bickering going on back and forth. A lot of the bickering going on between Jim Croce and Rob Grill was…well Rob would say “Jim, you know that we are bigger then you. We have had more hit records” but Jim would say “Yeah, but I got a big hit out right now.” It was that kind of bantering. So the tour managers flipped a coin and that decided it. I still have the quarter that the tour managers flipped. It was in the breast pocket of my tour jacket. It’s a denim studded jacket that I wore a lot and I thought it was the coolest thing. I still have the jacket too. It’s on a stand in what we call the memorabilia room with all the signed guitars. Anyways, they got the plane and we got the car. Well the guy that ran the airport had his license to fly but he wasn’t totally certified so he kind of did everything around the airport. He took care of the luggage and checked your tickets. That’s how he ended up flying the plane and he was the one who crashed it. I remember hearing the FA report and the plane crashed because of too much weight. Well we had the same amount of people and the same amount of luggage and same amount of guitar cases. It was just so weird when it all came down. We left and we heard the news of the plane crash and we went right home. We didn’t play the concert. It happened on a Thursday and we went back to LA and just hibernated the weekend. Then Warren called us all on Monday and we went to ABC Dunhill on Beverly Blvd because we had some tracks recorded but didn’t have the vocals on them. The studio was located right in the middle of the complex of the record label and Jim Croce was just so much loved and there wasn’t a dry eye in the place. And then they saw us and that just reinstilled that feeling of loss and so we knew that it wasn’t going to work. We did pull our boots up and go out again a week later, but it’s an eerie thought. It was a sad loss. I loved Jim. I thought he was a great guy. He came from a humble background of being a truck driver and then became a huge success right off the bat. He was selling records like you wouldn’t believe.

Sam: After The Grass Roots, you’re next major gig was playing Paul McCartney in the original production of Beatlemania. How did that come about?

Reed as Paul McCartney in "Beatlemania"

Reed: One day Patti, [who I was] separated [from] by this time, called me up and said “KROC is advertising this thing for people who could sing like Paul McCartney for a potential Broadway show.” Well that was where I ended up hearing about Beatlemania. So I did the audition, and a guy by the name of Sandy Yaguda was the music director. I went to the Continental Hyatt on Sunset and I did the audition. There was a whole room full of people and Sandy came up to me and said “You obviously look a bit like McCartney. What Beatles song do you know?” He gave me a list and there were sixty or seventy different songs. I said “I’ll give you a buck for every one I don’t know.” So I went up on stage and I did Maybe I’m Amazed, which shows vocal range, and then I did Long and Winding Road, and Sandy said “Stop stop stop stop stop.” A lot of the guys who had come for the audition had walked out. Sandy said “Look what you just did to this room!” I’m not bragging about it, but I could do it. So Sandy said “You’re going to New York.” There were two groups. The New York cast and the LA cast. I was in the LA cast and it was brilliant. I was with Randy Clark, P.M. Howard and Bobby Taylor and we were really good. We did all the vocals and I did all the high notes.

Sam: Did any of the Beatles see your show?

Reed: Well before I left for New York I was at Bruce Grakel’s house in Brentwood and Ringo Starr was there. Well Bruce asked Ringo what he felt about me doing Beatlemania and he said “You know, you’ve got my blessings. Just go and do the best you can do.” And I asked if he had a problem with it and he said “No, I don’t care.” But the Beatles did not see the show, nor did they ever mention it. I heard a rumor that one night John had snuck in but I don’t believe that. What I know is true is that I found out years later that Alan Parson’s, who was the Beatles’ engineer, who knew Paul very well, had said to a mutual friend that I did a great simulation. I thought “C’mon” but Gary said that Alan Parsons was going there to check it out. He was more curious because it was a multi-media show and there was a lot of projection. But [Parsons] said that my voice was absolutely brilliant. That was a huge compliment. But Beatlemania was fun.

Sam: Now in your music credits it says that you recorded with John Lennon on his Rock And Roll album.

In 1975 Reed was a session musician on John Lennon's "Rock and Roll" album: "All of a sudden heard this amazing voice, kind of like an English Jerry Lewis, and it was John Lennon!"

Reed: That was a fluke. I was living in Stone Canyon and I got a call from a guy named Bobby Jones. Bobby Jones was a very good bass player out of Chicago and he was out in LA and he called me and said “I’m going out to the Record Plant and I need a ride and you need to drive me and your going to have the time of your life.” I said “I dunno. I don’t think so.” He said “No. You’re going to like this. I’m not going to tell you what it’s about but you’re really going to like this.” Well when we got down there, there were people in the hallway and this guy comes out and says “What where doing tonight is that we need five guitar players, two drummers and the rest of you are going to have to leave.” Well I got invited to go in because Bobby knew the guy who was bringing people in. So everybody left and as we were standing in the hallway and all of a sudden heard this amazing voice, kind of like an English Jerry Lewis, and it was John Lennon! He was with Harry Nilsson. This was when he was the bad boy during his lost weekend. This was when he was living out in LA and getting drunk 24/7 and really having a tough time. So he was working with Phil Spector and they had recorded five songs but had got into a pissing match and Phil Spector got pissed off and took out a gun and shot a hole in the recording room studio and John Lennon said “I’m out of here.” So they split up and Phil Spector did this dramatic thing where he burnt the tapes. I don’t know if that’s true or not but what John did was take advantage of the situation and he was getting free studio time and all the perks. The musicians weren’t going to get paid or credit and he had it nailed. Mick Jagger was also there that night, and Jack Bruce was playing bass. But he got pissed off and left and I picked up bass. I played bass on Do You Want to Dance. But it’s weird because what John does is what he did with Strawberry Fields Forever and he takes snippets of tape and edits it all together. He would run two spools of sixteen track tapes and you’d play that song from the beginning and you’d never stop. You’d run that song down for forty five minutes and when one spool would kick off they’d record another spool of the same song. Then what they’d do is sit down and edit it together in one complete song. So we finished that and somebody else picked the bass and I went over to the B3 Hammond and they were doing a song called One Too Many Rivers to Cross. So I was playing this Procol Harum type thing on the B3 and Lennon comes out of the control room and he’s looking at me and I thought he was going to tell me to get out of here but he sits down next to me on the organ and he yells through the microphone “This is what’s going on! This guy has got it nailed!” And I thought “Oh yeah!” I was like Forrest Gump sitting on the bench. All I was doing was waltzing around the chords with a melody. So Lennon ways to me “Hey mate. Do you mind if I could do that? You play piano and I’ll do that.” So he was playing the organ and I was playing piano but it never ended up on anything. But the session went on until five in the morning. Lennon was very alert and very on top of his game but everybody slowly filtered out. But they opened the doors and I could see the light starting to filter in, but Bobby wanted to go home and crash. But you know, John was there. He was sitting down with a guitar and I picked up a guitar and I started doing a lick and John started jamming with me. He wanted to keep going. We were sitting on two folding chairs just looking at each other. But eventually I said “John, I gotta go man.” He said “Aww, come on.” I said “Maybe next week” and John said “Yeah. We’ll be here next week.” So I left and that following week they were mixing down some stuff. Mickey Dolenz and Harry Nilsson was there. Well some asshole had took some bottle of red wine and placed it right on top of the control board and his arm hit the bottle and there was red wine all over and it shorted out the board and that ended that night. John said “Everybody out of here” and he was pissed. He knew he was going to be responsible for the board and it put a damper on the whole night, so I got out of there.

Sam: In the 1980’s you were involved briefly with Badfinger. How long were you with them?

Badfinger circa 1982 - Tom Evans, Mike Gibbons, Bob Jackson, Donnie Dacus and Reed Kailing

Reed: It wasn’t that long. It was only a six week tour. It was the most memorable tour that Tom Evans said he ever had. There was a bond there. Mike Gibbons, Bob Jackson and Tom, and we rehearsed with Donny Dacus. I brought him in cause he was an excellent slide guitar player. You know what it was like? It was just a blast! It was so much fun. I was playing songs I enjoyed doing. It was the closest thing to the Beatles in my viewpoint. Tommy and I would stay up at night and he’d tell me stories about Abby Road. It was a short lived tour but it had an impact on fans. They called themselves Fingerheads. They’d have their albums tucked under their arms and they’d ask me to sign them. I’d say “I’m not really a member of the band” but they’d say “But your so good” and I’d say “Okay.” It was a short lived tour. It was a sad tour. I fell into it through a guy named John Mangold , who was a part time manager. He rang me up one day and said “What are you doing?” I said “A whole lot of nothing.” He said “Badfinger’s in Milwaukee.” They were living in poverty in Milwaukee. They had no money, but they drank a lot. That was the band’s downfall. It really was. But on the stage they were “Johnny on the spot.” They got themselves in some legal issues and finally they had to get back on the road. Tommy owed some money to the IRS and to England and it was atrocious. So John Marigold said “Would you like to play in [Badfinger]” and I said “Yeah” but he said “Do you play slide guitar” and I said “You know, I’m not very good, but I know a really good slide guitarist” and Donny was. Donny wasn’t doing anything and we got a thousand a week. It was pittance but it was the excitement and the fun of the tour. And listen to this. We got so close and so good that when we were doing the road dates word got out. Tommy was trying to connect with McCartney again, but McCartney was off doing Wings, but Tommy’s people got back to him and said that McCartney had heard that Badfinger was doing really good and was really bonding again and had a good thing. We were midway through the tour, but the next thing was that the promoters were saying Badfinger is such a classic band that they should be opening for major acts. So there were a lot of things in the planning, but unfortunately [Tommy] had a manager named Jack Cossack and he didn’t know what he was doing. So they were really blinded. They were constantly blinded. It was sad. Joey Molland was threatening Tommy with lawsuits because he was also using the name Badfinger. Well Badfinger was Tommy’s band. It was not Joey Molland’s. But that was how Joey Molland was. He was a huge instigator. But it went from bad to worse and so when I played with them, at the end of the tour, we were at the International airport were Tommy was going back to England, he said to me “Mate, it was really great performing with you. I really wish we could work together.” I said “Why not Tommy? There’s nothing getting in the way.” He said “Nothing, but I have a lot of issues to deal with. I want you to have something.” He gave me a cassette that said Tom Evans on it. It was a white cassette. He said “Just take care of it for me.” I said “Yeah, I will.” He said “Mate, I gotta go.” I gave him a big hug and he ran out of the tour bus. I had this tape for months and I never listened to it. Later on Tommy called me and asked if we could take the trip again and do another tour but said that Jack Cossack wanted us to take a cut in salary and I said “Y’know Tommy, I can’t do it. We can get better money. Every promoter we worked for on the road said that next time we came through they would double what we made.” He said “Yeah. I know. But Jack’s stubborn.” But I said “Your being stupid” Now I really regret saying that, but I said “Your being stupid and not taking responsibility for yourself and I’m not going to stand for that. Y’know Tommy, I love ya and I’d travel the world with you but I just can’t do this.” He said “Mate. I understand.” Well Tommy put a band together and came back to the United States on a whim and a prayer with no money and the word got out that the band was really bad. The promoters that were going to pay double for us all cancelled the tour dates. So Tommy just quit and went back to England and was frustrated and broke. But finally I got the dreadful phone call from Jack Cossack saying “Have you heard the news about Tommy.” I said “No. What happened?” He said “He hung himself.” I said “Oh my God.” I was just devastated. I hate to put it this way and he was a very talented guy but if I were Tommy I would have gotten out of it because I have the fortitude not to give up. But Tommy got pounded over the head so much that it finally cracked and he was losing blood fast and he went down. It was the saddest day of my life. It really was. It tainted the whole picture.

Sam: Do you still have the white tape that Tommy gave you?

Badfinger's Tom Evans commited suicide in 1983: "Tommy got pounded over the head so much that it finally cracked and he was losing blood fast and he went down. It was the saddest day of my life. It really was. It tainted the whole picture."

Reed: After I had found out that he died and I got my senses back, I immediately went to play it on the tape machine. The songs were played in a home on a TEAC four-track recorder. One side contained all Elvis Presley songs that he had recorded. I flipped it over, and he had about six songs that he had recorded. One song was just a smash. It was a kicker. It was so typical Badfinger. I’m not embarrassed to say that it actually brought tears to my eyes. I just started crying like a little kid. I wasn’t just sobbing, but rather that genuine pain of losing somebody. It was devastating to me. Who knows what the future would have brought? Well, out of friendship and sharing, which John Shiely and I do, I gave the tape to him and said “Protect this.” The tape was so old that I was afraid to play it. John played it, burned the songs to a CD, and gave me a copy of it. John is a serious collector. He has the money to do it, but it doesn’t matter. He has the passion to do it.

Sam: So you have a new album in the works. How is the album coming along?

In 1977 Reed got screwed by Player when they "stole" his song "Baby Come Back." Player had the hit, but in the end Reed got the gold record.

Reed: It’s done. We just finished typing the lyric sheets [for the CD insert]. There are fifteen cuts. The album’s called Raw, Rare, Well Done. It’s been in the works for about two years. Some of the nudge to release such an album came from Rick Wozniak, a good friend of mine who encouraged me to share my archive of original material with the world. Rick was also extremely helpful in creating my website and in helping me move this album project forward. What the CD contains is songs that I recorded a long time ago. The whole project started when we were able to get my songs on a website called Broadjam. Another friend of mine, Paul Novotny, was a member of it. For four hundred bucks, you could put your music on it. Then people from all over the world could come in and rate your songs on a scale from one to five, five being the best. They’d rate the song content, the melody, the voice, lyrics and so on. So we had demos that we recorded from 1977 to 1982 and they were songs that had never been released. They were performed in the studio, some with a band and some with just a guitar and voice. There are other songs that had that little hook thing to them. They were from the classic rock era. They were fun songs. I was getting ranked in the top ten and in the number one position constantly on this Broadjam thing. I was getting votes from the United States, Australia, Japan, Russia, the Ukraine … It was amazing! I was getting four out of fives on everything, but the problem was that the songs were demos. They were copies of the original recordings, so there were generational flaws. So we said to ourselves, let’s take the top four songs that really got hit on a lot and bring them down to Nashville. So we recorded those four tunes, and they are at the very end of the CD [and called “Well Done.”] The “Raw” segment consists of songs that were electrified with a band and recorded at the Record Plant with Warren Entner. They are very exciting and very live, but the sound is being enhanced a little bit because they are old demos. But I said to the producer, “I don’t think I can go back in the studio and recapture that energy. One song is called Rock and Roll Me Over, which is the first song in that section. And the last song is a version of Rock and Roll Me Over which I recorded on the road with Badfinger, and it’s a reprise. The “Rare” segment contains songs that nobody has heard before. They are just demos, guitar and vocals, that I performed one afternoon at Emitt Rhode’s house. They seem to have a really neat presence about them. Quiet and nice. Emitt Rhodes is a cult kind of guy. He was the first one to record everything on an album prior to McCartney doing McCartney. He had a hit called Fresh as a Daisy. He was a real hermit. There is also a song called Just for the Bucks that I recorded at his studio in Hawthorne. In the background is Stephen Bishop; the guitar parts are played by Donny Dacus, who took over for Terry Kath from Chicago when he died, and who also played for Stephen Stills. He’s a remarkable guitarist. One song, called You, was co-written with Kiki Dee. Then there is another song titled Left Bank, which was co-written by Don Johnson just before he entered Miami Vice. Don’s got a great voice. He’s a very talented writer. He did one album that was sort of goofy; but God bless him, he was a great country singer. There are some interesting people on this CD. So we just finished it, and I’m going to have a photo taken for the back cover. Additional information will be available on my website. It’s one of those things that either is going to take off or not. But the popularity of the website itself has regained is astounding. Well, in the other day, I had over five hundred hits from Beijing alone. That may not be much, but for never having been in Beijing, it was surprising to get that many hits from just one place. So my CD could turn out to be one of those things that people buy merely out of curiosity. I don’t know where this thing will go. Sometimes I view it as a great calling card, but you never know! You just don’t know, and they [the songs] are Raw, Rare and Well Done!

Sam: Reed, you have had such a long career and have performed with so many great people and bands. You’ve had more success then the average person will ever have in their lifetime. Do you feel that you have fulfilled your goals, or do you think that there is still more out there that you would like to achieve? What else do you have for the future? Where do you want to go yet?

Reed: Well that’s a very good question. No. I’m not totally satisfied. This interviewer from Milwaukee Magazine came over and saw the room upstairs where all the pictures and history of my music career is and he said “My God. I had no idea.” Well, I said that I did a little of everything. Everything I did, I did very, very well. But I remember some years ago, after I came back from LA, and I was really trying to find myself, there was a guy like you, who asked, “Do you feel like you reached the pinnacle?” I didn’t have the answer for him, but a friend of mine named Charlie said “No, he hasn’t reached his peak and he won’t until he finds success by himself.” At that moment, I thought about his remark, and I felt “What an asshole thing to say to me.” But over the years, the more I came to think about it. I wasn’t hiding behind a band; but Charlie turned out to be right. The moment you do something entrepreneurial sufficiently on your own, no matter what it may be in your life, there is an element of truth in what Charlie said, the notion that you need to achieve something on your own. I mean, if I were to die tomorrow I’d have no regrets. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I stay awake at night and say “Oh, I wish this and that.” It’s that I have no regrets, but I feel the need to achieve something entirely on my own.

Perhaps Reed Kailing hasn’t achieved the solo success that he desires yet, but Reed has a fan base and a following out there. Since 2004, when I first started chronicling the story of the Hardy Boys, I have received many letters and e-mails from music fans and record collectors asking for information on Reed and asking when we’d be featuring an interview with him, which assures me that Reed Kailing`s new CD will be a well received, making Reed`s journey take a new bend and to continue well into the next decade.

POP CULTURE ADDICT NOTE: I would like to send a special thanks to Reed Kailing`s friend and associate Rick Wozniak for his support and assistance in putting this interview together. I also would like to thank RC McWilliams for allowing us to print his photos of Reed Kailing and The Destinations. The majority of the photos used for this article were used by permission by Reed Kailing. For more information please visit Reed’s site at www.reedkailing.com