Hey Baby, They’re Playing Our Song: A Conversation with Carl Giammerese (page 2)

Sam: Now The Buckinghams got back together in the 1980’s. What was it about the 1980’s that made the time right for the return of The Buckinghams?

Carl: In the ‘70s, mentioning yourself as a 60s group was the kiss of death. You couldn’t get any play out of that. It was not something that was cool at the time. Dennis and I were together as Tufano and Giammarese until 1977, and then we split up. [Dennis] stayed out in LA as an actor, and I came back [to Chicago] and became a jingle singer. Then, 1980 comes along and you could feel this excitement and energy that ‘60s music was coming back. Everybody was talking about it. The oldies stations were springing up and playing 60’s music. I think they were a big part of the success. Our fan base, at that point, were in their thirties. They had money to spend and they were embracing the music they remembered as teenagers. They were great songs. All of a sudden you felt this excitement were anything 60s was cool again. And then one day I got a call from the program director of WLS Radio. His name was John Gehron, and John says we’re sponsoring ChicagoFest and asked if there was a chance that The Buckinghams would get back together for a reunion and perform for a couple of nights. My first reaction was “No, I don’t think so.” We had talked about it through the years, but it never got together and everybody was doing different things. But I called Dennis Tufano and asked him what he thought and to my surprise he said “Yeah. Let’s see what we can do.” I called Nick Fortuna and Nick was available. I called Marty Grebb but Marty was not available. He, at the time, was playing with Chicago. So I got a keyboard player named John Cammelot. So we put it together and rehearsed for two weeks and came up with enough material to do a show. We did all The Buckinghams’ hits and we did a lot of Tufano and Giammarese songs. That was basically our show. I remember that first night and twelve thousand people showed up. The response was overwhelming and the audience just went wild. We played for three nights and had a great audience every night. Everybody was so enthusiastic. It inspired us to continue on. At that point we had no intentions of forming on a regular basis. So for a couple of years Dennis would come into Chicago, Nick was still living in Chicago and we would get together and do a handful of dates in the summertime. By late ’83 we could really feel that there were a lot more venues out there and it was a national thing and we could go out and play. So Nick and I sat down one day and said “Hey, let’s really put this thing together and go out and play.” And I got real ambitious and had written a lot of new songs and thought we could make a demo and get a record deal and go out, who knows? I mean, at the time it had only been a little over ten years since our last hit. We were still in our thirties and so forth. We felt we could do this thing so we talked to Dennis about it and he sounded sort of enthusiastic about it, but not as enthusiastic as we were, but he agreed to do it. So I booked studio time and Dennis came in to Chicago and we went into the studio and were in the middle of recording a couple of sides and all of a sudden Dennis came in and he was listening to the songs on a cassette in the car on the way in, like if he was trying to learn them and I was thinking to myself “Why doesn’t he know these songs? I sent him these songs a couple of months ago.” So we were in the studio and Dennis was trying to learn them and I figured he’d get it. But all of a sudden he calls me and Nick outside of the studio in the lobby and he looks at us and says, “You know what guys. I just don’t want to be a Buckingham again.” He turned a page and he was really pursuing his acting career. So Nick and I were dumbfounded. We were both standing there with our mouths open and didn’t know what to say. So I was kind of depressed about it. Dennis went back to LA. But after a few days of thinking about it Nick called me and said “Well, why don’t we do it anyway?” I said, “We just lost our lead singer. What do you mean? How do we do this?” I wanted that sense of originality. I didn’t want to be another Platters, or whoever, with no original members in the band. There was Nick and I, and Nick says “Why don’t you sing?” I said, “I don’t know man. It doesn’t feel right. I don’t know if the audience would accept that.” It wasn’t that I didn’t think I could do it, but I wasn’t sure what the audience would think. But I let Nick talk me into it and we put together a band and we tried some different things. We even had a girl singer with us for a little while, which didn’t work out so well. But what I realized right away was the audience just wanted some originality and to hear those songs again. So that was cool and I didn’t have anybody coming up to me and asking “Where’s Dennis Tufano?”

Sam: How did your newest album, Reaching Back, come about?

Carl: For several years I had been getting requests from people and fans [who said] “Why don’t you do some new songs and record them in that style and that sound?” We had a certain symphonic sound, and not using the typical chords used in pop music and a certain sound in our arrangements. I became very familiar with because after years and years of playing, I started to see what Guercio did back in those days, and I started revisiting those albums that I hadn’t listened to in years, like Portraits and Time and Charges, and started really digging in and listening to those records and saying “Oh, that’s how he did that!” So pretty soon I started writing songs and getting the feel for that sound again, and I put myself there again and before I knew it I had a whole collection of songs that I had written and I was already hearing the arrangements in my head as I was writing them.

Sam: Well that’s what is interesting is that Reaching Back sounds like a lost Buckinghams’ album. The first note on the first song of the album, I’ll Never Say Goodbye, is the first note of Don’t You Care. It’s a great lead in. It sounds distinctively sixties.

Carl: I know what you mean. I never had any fear of anybody saying “Oh, he’s ripping off The Buckinghams” because we were The Buckinghams. I started thinking to myself, if we continued recording what would it have sounded like? Sound quality-wise it’s better because we’ve come a long way on our recording techniques. We didn’t have twenty-four tracks or digital recording back then. I was trying to be as much as a purist as possible with recreating that sound, but I didn’t want to go back that far to take the recording quality down. But it came together and I started mapping out the tunes and recording them and the songs just developed. I’ll be honest that I went back and forth on whether to put the five original songs on it or not.

Sam: Well I think it’s a good addition because it tempts the audience to purchase the album by getting new versions of your old hits, and then discovering your new material. It’s actually really clever.

Carl: My instinct was to leave them off, but then our biggest opportunity to attract a record label or to sell the songs was by putting those hits on there. People would come up to an autograph table after a show and go “Which album has Kind of a Drag and Don’t You Care or Mercy, Mercy, Mercy on it” and you could say “[Reaching Back[ has all five songs on it.” So then they would buy the album and then I’d get a lot of great e-mails saying “You know I got this album for these three songs, but the other songs are really great!” I’m really proud of that record and hopefully we’ll do a few other things in the future.

Sam: Now one of the things that I think is really exciting is that you played Barack Obama’s Inauguration ball. Now you also played the last Inauguration four years ago for George W. Bush as well. What was the difference between the two inaugurations?

Carl: The immediate difference was getting in there. There seemed to be three times as many people and also the optimism and excitement level was at a frenzy compared to what I remember from four years ago. The minute we hit the street and were picked up at the airport and driven into the city, well first of all you had to take certain routes. A lot of streets were blocked off, but there were thousands of people on every street. And everybody seemed to be in such a good mood and there seemed to be so much enthusiasm. That was the immediate difference you saw right away. Just a feeling that change was coming for the good, despite all the economical problems that we’re having now. Considering all those things are happening people seemed excited about this president and the possibilities, and I realize that this man can’t create miracles, but you got the feeling that he is the best guy for the job and he’ll bring some continuity and calm and deal with the problems better than everybody else can, and start us on the right path. I didn’t get that close to the inauguration itself. There were definitely over a million people there. We just stood along the perimeter and you couldn’t even see the whole thing. We went there for a little while and watched the rest on TV. The event itself that we played for had a lot of enthusiasm, and people hit the dance floor as soon as we started playing and you could tell it was a party mood and people were there to have a good time. And so they were dancing, and we probably did more dance material than we normally do at a concert because that’s what it was all about. We had a couple of thousand people for that ball. I saw the guest list and we had about fifty or sixty senators and congressmen.

Sam: Anyhow, looking back at the music industry, and you’ve been involved with the music industry non-stop since the 60’s, what do you think the problem with today’s music industry is? Do you even pay attention to today’s music industry? I mean, the music of the 60’s is timeless and is going to be played forever, but today’s music doesn’t seem to have the same eternal appeal. It’s not of the same caliber or quality. What do you feel the problem with today’s music industry is?

Carl: First of all I do keep my finger on the pulse of what’s going on today in the music business and I do hear a lot of stuff. I’m not a big fan of rap music. I do like some hip hop music and a lot of the pop groups today. I think there are a lot of good bands out there. I like Counting Crows and Matchbox 20, but they’re not even considered contemporary anymore. I think there are a lot of great artists that are making a lot of great music. The difference is that I don’t hear a lot of the great melodies and lyric content that we had back in the 60’s that make our songs lasting forever. I can’t really say that thirty or forty years down the line if those songs are going to be around. My gut feeling is no, because we live in such a throwaway society and one of the things that you notice that happens is that the groups and the artists today, they burn really hot for a short period of time and then its on to the next thing. They’re just not developing careers anymore. Let’s make ten million dollars on this album and then it’s on to the next thing. It’s a real throwaway society that we live in. Also, we’re being hit with so much today. The media is just so overwhelming. All the different ways of getting music. There are so many artists and bands than there were back when I was starting out. Everything is at a much, much faster pace. People don’t seem to have the patience. And one big thing that we were fortunate of back in the 60s were the baby boomers. They have gone a long way with us and it was the biggest part of the population and the driving force that we don’t have today. It just doesn’t seem that the younger audience today is going to support the artists. That’s probably one of the key elements. The support that we got along the way is what the audience today isn’t going to get from their audience.

Sam: Well I think it’s interesting to look at the music of the 90’s and to note that there were barely any artists that stand out even ten years later.

Carl: I don’t want to become my parents and put down music today and say that I remember when we were coming up and its hard to believe that the big band era was old when rock and roll hit. My parents would say “Ah, this music is garbage compared to our music.” So I try to have open ears and an open mind and I find a lot of things that I really enjoy. But everything is overcategorized, too. Even the radio. They’ll only play this or that, but back in our day pop music was pop music. You would look at the charts and the number one song might be the Beatles and the number two song might be Frank Sinatra. Even the shows you’d do would be all over the board. So the audience was more diverse and hearing a lot of different music and different songs. You had a lot of crossover. Country music stars would become pop music stars, like Roy Orbison or Conway Twitty. But, the bottom line is that I don’t feel that there is as much in quality songs or good material as there was back then and I try to put myself in another place. I tend to think that every time a new Beatles album would come out you were waiting and anticipating that album and they would blow you away every time they would do something new. But I don’t see that happening at all anymore. That kind of excitement or that cutting edge of what they were doing back then. One of the things that I really noticed, because I talk to a lot of artists that really embrace the 60’s bands and our music, because I really think they see the connection, too. We were basically four- or five-piece rock bands with guitars too, and it hasn’t changed a real lot. Whereas back when we were starting, our parents music was so different we didn’t embrace it at all. But, to answer your question in a nutshell, I don‘t think forty years from now these songs are still going to be remembered or still be listened to. It just doesn’t feel that way.

Sam: But on the other hand, forty years from now, do you think Kind of a Drag is going to be being played?

Carl: Oh, man. Will they find a new term for our music? It won’t be classic rock anymore. It’ll be ancient music. But you know, a great song is a great song.

Doesn’t matter what they call The Buckinghams’ music in forty years from now, their music will always continue to be great songs. The Buckinghams still currently tour throughout North America. For more information on their concert dates check out The Buckinghams’ web site at http://www.thebuckinghams.com/home.html

Also available at The Buckinghams’ web site is their latest album, Reaching Back, as well their live album, Live and Well and Carl’s solo project, Trying Not to Fade. Now I’m going to be completely blunt about Reaching Back. When I come across new recordings from classic rock bands, even if it is just the artists rerecording their old material, I enter with a lot of cynicism.  For some reason time usually plays against classic bands who, in an attempt to update themselves, seem to create music that is lackluster and sounds phony.  Even my favorite artists have trouble recreating themselves.  The thing they don’t understand is that they don’t need to recreate themselves because their fans loved them for the way they sounded.  It’s a classic case of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.”  I’ve always wondered why these groups just can’t create new music that sounds like the music they made in the 60’s.  Well Carl Giammarese and The Buckinghams are one of the few groups that feel the same way I do and as a result their new studio album, Reaching Back could be one of the best new offerings from a classic band that I have ever listened to. I was surprised how Reaching Back succeeds in recreating the dynamic sound of the 60’s Chicago music, thanks to a horn section, as well as preserving The Buckinghams’ distinct sound that we remember.  Reaching Back doesn’t sound like a “comeback album.”  It sounds like a lost album recorded during the band’s heyday and only released now.  As a result the songs all manage to sound fresh and exciting.  The only difference is that the lyrics are a lot more introspective than from the tracks from the 60’s, but then The Buckinghams, now older and wiser, are writing from a different perspective than they were then. Reaching Back is truly one of the best contemporary offerings ever from a classic pop group. I can’t recommend this album enough. Reaching Back truly ensures Carl and The Buckinghams’ survival into the 21^st Century.

POP CULTURE ADDICT NOTE: This interview would not have happened without the help of Dawn Lee Wakefield, who is co-authoring Carl’s upcoming book about The Buckinghams and his career in the music industry. Thanks Dawn for all your help, hard work and support.