Ricky McLagen Review and Cheeseburger Deluxe
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| Courtesy Jack Whiteside |
Ricky McLagen Review
Jack: So then we
(Jack and Cam Marshman) came back (to London York London London Cam , so 3 guys from Choker
and we traveled all around, still not playing anything on the radio but we made
a few concessions, we were always doing Elvis
and Buddy Holly stuff.
WW: What was this
band called?
Jack: The Ricky McLagen Review. First just as
a 3 piece, it was just Ricky McLagen. It was just a guy I went to school with
and we picked the name because he had a sister named Lulu, Lulu McLagen. I
dunno, it just sounded good, there was no Ricky. And we got bought off and
shipped out and we were playing as a trio and we were in over our heads. We had
a guy in London
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| London Free Press courtesy of Jack Whiteside |
Frank: I went
back to school in 74 at Western (University). I went back as a mature student
and I started flunking out cause I was playing in bands, I never took it that
seriously. Then 75/76 Jack and Cam moved back
to London
J:
So I looked over, and it was ‘Greenback Dollar’ by the Kingston Trio and I said ‘He’s
in!’….laughter….anybody, like that’s hip to be square to be listening to
‘Greenback Dollar’ and then he was in. We basically said, why don’t you come
and play piano with us, cause he was a piano player, a blues guy. So I said, if
you don’t know the song, just tinkle…laughter…meaning like Floyd Cramer, those are my words. Cause he could sing and add
another dimension and do a bunch of different stuff.
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| Setlist courtesy of Jack Whiteside |
F: That was about
75/76 and we started playing out at The York and we had a coupla gigs at The
Vic. They were into some stuff like The
Everly Brothers and other stuff that I’d never done before. They started to
do more rockabilly, Buddy Holly and
stuff like that and that’s when I started getting into that with those guys.
And I’d always liked Dylan, so I thought
this is a chance for me to do some Dylan
stuff, cause the blues bands would never want to do that. I really liked it
because I was learning new stuff on the piano. We used to play at bars that had
a piano. I had an amp and I had this little thing called a DeArmand. It was a contact mic, I would take a cap off
of a salt shaker and it would fit perfectly on the back of one of the beams in
the back of the piano and ram it in there. And then it sounded really amplified
and it came out good. We did that for awhile, then I got a Fender Rhodes in Nashville Ontario
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| Courtesy Jack Whiteside |
J: Anyways, but
sometimes, and this isn’t very nice, but sometimes, we just wanted the 3 piece
money and we’d just leave Frank, and say, ‘oh that’s just a 3 piece
thing’…laughter, I still kid him about that. I’d say, ‘Hey Frank, you remember
that gig in Espanola?’ and he would say ‘that was the 3 piece PRICK
band’…laughter…I didn’t know him well enough, but I shouldn’t have done that.
Eventually it was the 4 piece Ricky McLagen Revue, we played in London a lot
and about half in Toronto, 6 nighters and matinees and the amateur contests.
But this is also where the Blue Boot (later re-named Cedar
Lounge, north west corner of King and Talbot in London) comes in. And what was
going on at the Blue Boot was bluegrass and all of the native people were going
there. I came back to London
The Sheiks and
these people are playing at the Vic, or the York. Anyways, Cam
(while still in RMR) ended up playing with this group, I don’t remember what
they were called, Neal McAuly was their guitar player and we gradually, through
Cam and I, got the McLagens into the Blue
Boot. And then we would play there and it would start changing, there was a
drummer you know, and there were a lot of native people there. And it was this
great old hotel, old timers, drinking draught. They’d be there when you came to
set up in the afternoon and they’d be there when you started playing at night.
And you had to watch yourself because it was dangerous. They had a railing, not
chicken wire, but a railing right in front of the stage. There were fights and
people throwing stuff and shit. Everybody felt that, there was The Flying
Horse, The Flying Chair, The Flying Fist, you really had to be careful, you
couldn’t look at some chick in the audience, cause if you looked wrong, the
boyfriend would be down your throat. But my point is, we started converting (changing
from bluegrass music to rock’n’roll) that place.
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| Courtesy Jack Whiteside |
F: We did that from
about 75 to early 77.
J: That ended
because our drummer, Paul went off to do something or other. Cam ,
he was always getting gigs cause they were always looking for bass players and
that’s basically when Uranus started.
Cheeseburger
Deluxe/Uranus
Frank: Then in early 77 we (RMR) disbanded and formed
Uranus, first it was Cheeseburger Deluxe (that lasted about
4 or 5 months) and that was with Jack, Jerry (on bass), a guy named Steve
Alfred on drums, myself on piano and guitar and Tim Woodcock on guitar. We didn’t know what kind of name we wanted. I
actually thought that Cheeseburger Deluxe was kinda cheesy…laughter… but Uranus was kinda stupid too, cause it
sounded like an arena type band…I think it was Jerry came up with that name, or
it was kinda him and me talking about it and we went through the whole joke
thing about it…and we were both laughing. We started branching out a little
more to some of the stuff that was coming out. When RMR was playing, I started
reading in magazines about this punk stuff coming out in Britain London London
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| Uranus with Tim Woodcock, far right. Photo by Bruce Jones |
Jer: Tim left to
go to guitar making school in Arizona
F: Then Steve Alfred left…then Jerry said ‘we
can ask Dexter, but I’m just a little worried about him cause he’s kinda crazy
to work with but he’s a really good drummer’. I thought we just had to get this
guy.
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| Neil McAuly on guitar. Photo by Robert Diebert |
D: I was going to
go to the Conservatory (of Music) there (in Toronto), I had my grants and loans
for music, I was accepted by the Profs and the Dean and sure as shit, about a
month before school started, I was selecting my courses and Frank calls me. I
was living with a girl (in Toronto London Toronto London
That was 78, there was a lot of living room time. I came
back here with nothing, no money, and Frank knew that. So he let me stay with
him at his Mom’s house that he was staying at. And if they moved I had to move
too cause I had nowhere to go. They weren’t gigging enough to support me. It
was like the York Hotel for $25 or $30 for the week and a couple of free beers.
It wasn’t a living but we created music. We stayed fast to working on our
tunes. There was a lot of writing going on, like Frank was honing ‘I’m
Wonderful’ and ‘5 Bucks’, those were his tunes. Jack had some pretty good
tunes. Jack and Frank, I feel, were a really good chemistry together, they
really were. I think Jack and Frank together were a good yin yang as it were
and they worked really well together. And then they had a great rhythm section
behind them that had years prior to that band, so they were already tight, Jerry
and myself. And with strong blues roots, which keeps everything just on the up
and up, we’re not outside, we just want everything to go Boom Boom Boom to keep
everything tight. It was a good time, there never was any real money.
F: And when he (Dexter) came down, I thought he
was just dynamite, his playing was just fabulous. So we played in that form,
with Neil McAuly and myself, Jerry, Jack and Dexter, but it wasn’t very long
because Neil quit. We did a gig up in Kincardine and we did some rock and roll
stuff on the road that freaked him out. It freaked all of us out, but he
thought that that was what we were all about.
He said he couldn’t keep up with that kind of lifestyle so he just
packed it in. He was a good player.
D: He (Neil) couldn’t
take the shenanigans.
J: We were
starting to do more and more rock’n’roll, Rockpile
stuff and trying to get away from the 12 bar blues and all those guys. Then we
started getting real popular at The York and the Boot. But the turning point,
was when we got Frank….’let’s get rid of the fucking piano, cause it’s hard to
lug around and it doesn’t fit in with all this rock’n’roll stuff’. When we did
that, it freed Frank up, he played acoustic guitar and then people could see
him moving. You could see me moving and it just added so much and that was the
perfect thing to do. And when we did that, that’s when Uranus began to me.
F: It took awhile
for me to switch cause I was still playing a lot of piano. I was more and more
playing the guitar cause it was easier to move, but we still had the piano
around.
And then we started getting into some of the newer stuff
that started coming out in 77. We were doing some Elvis Costello and some Nick
Lowe and stuff like that and did some Dave
Edmunds. And it was for certain occasions we’d learn some songs, like when
we had to play a wedding, ‘I Knew The Bride When She Used To Rock And
Roll’…that’s when we learned that song and we’d just add it to the repertoire.
J: We were doing
‘I Knew The Bride’ and ‘Back To School Days’ and people were really starting to
dig this stuff and we said let’s just go for this, cause that’s what they want.
I’d always done stuff like ‘Matchbox’, like fast rock’n’roll, stuff.
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| Legendary Stork Club in Port Stanley. Courtesy Jack Whiteside |
F: And then we
started leaning a little more to rock’n’roll and rockabilly and stuff like
that. But it was still a mix. And we kept hammering away playing the York and
the Vic and it kept getting better as we went along. And I thought, this is the
best band I’ve ever been in. And at that point with Dexter, Jerry and Jack, here’s
what I really, really want to do. We would practice like crazy, we’d practice
everyday, almost everyday like a job we’d be over at Dexter’s place.
WW: Why do you
think you were getting so many different kinds of people out to your shows?
J: Well, we knew
a lot of people, and we knew different kinds of people. Like we knew these guys
that were hockey players, Doug Mitchell was a friend of ours and he was an
artist and we met all these guys and they would play hockey every Saturday
night for years. And after the game they would go to the Vic for last call and
just get rivers of draught…laughter… and so we would go there because we didn’t
have any money and just partake of the draughts…laughter…. And then they
started hiring us for their hockey awards thing on these farms on these flatbed
trucks and stuff.
F: It was a cross
section of people coming out to see us. We had a biker contingent and some of
the punkers coming out to see us and a lot of students and professors from
Western. Jack would say, ‘hey there’s some bikers coming out, why don’t we do
‘Motorbikin’ by Chris Spedding?’ We’d do that and the punks would love that
too. The bikers would go crazy when you do ‘Motorbikin’, they thought it was
great and it was just for them.
J: The bikers
liked us. The motorcycle enthusiasts, not gang guys, no patches or stuff. Kind
of scary guys and I knew some of them, growing up in the East end, the tough
guys. But they liked the rock’n’roll and who else was playing it, nobody. You
could go see the radio bands, but no, this was better.
F: The bikers
would follow us around a lot, they’d come to little places outside of town,
like Goderich and Aylmer
J: We played in
Forest, towards the Bend (Grand Bend, on Lake Huron), a nice place and all of
the bikers would come out and there’d be 30 bikes out front and we’d come in
and all the owners came out and god, they were scared! Until they (the bikers) started
buying just jug after jug after jug of draught and they saw all the money.
They’d just sit there and drink jugs all night and listen to the band and after,
they’d all get out there and get on their bikes. All 30 bikes lined up and
through some unseen signal, all you’d hear is vroom vroom vroom and they all
started up. And another unseen signal, they all headed out down the road in a
line and I used to love that. We used to play at their picnics all the time
every year. We weren’t afraid of those guys.
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| Uranus at a biker or hockey picnic. Photo by Bruce Jones |
F: So 2 of the bikers,
Ben Webster and Bruce Dawson came up to us and said ‘we want to make a deal
with you. We’ve got this state of the art sound system and we want to work with
you and do sound for you and stuff like that’. So we said ‘what do you know
about sound?’ And they said nothing, so we worked with them for a little bit
and Bruce became really good, Bruce was a quick learner.
J: Bruce got to
be the sound man, because he had the best stereo at home, or the best sound in
his truck or something like that…it’s like the best guitar player gets to be
the lead guitar player. So he was the sound guy and the other guy was the light
guy, so fine, just tune it in and let’s have some fun, it’s easy, it’s not Pink
Floyd it was just good little rock’n’roll songs, make it loud enough for them
to dance to it and we’ll be fine.
F: So we’d get
him at rehearsals and we’d work on getting the sound down. We’d want little
echo things at a specific spot of the song and we’d write out a setlist and
what to do and where to pan and echo. And he really got that down, and our
shows started to get really going. And Ben, he didn’t do too much sound, he did
a bit, but he wasn’t as good as Bruce, who was really good.
WW: Let’s talk
about recording at Roger Quick Studio.
F: So we did the
recording of ‘Lonesome Train’ and ‘All Along The Watchtower’ as sort of a
reggae kind of version out at this guy’s (Roger Quick, long time country artist
who released many records) place in Parkhill Studios. He took an interest in
us, and he said ‘come on out and play at Parkhill’. It was an old country singer at this Parkhill
Studio and this guy did a terrific job on recording us. It sounded really crisp
and clean and good.
D: Ya, that was
great, that was the best recording. It was awesome, like the later digital recording
of the Uranus album, ‘You’re So
Square’, after the LP, like the digital CD (Unidisc Records), a little juicier.
But the Roger Quick stuff really had an edge to it, it was really nice, it was
analogue, it was hot, it would sizzle, it was old school!
Jer: I can’t
remember what else we recorded there, maybe 4 tunes. I remember there was a
young guy that did the engineering there, and it was 4 track.
WW: But none of
that was released was it?
Jer: No,no, I’m
not sure what the story was there.
WW: Did you
record the first 7” at Awes Studio?
J: Ya, it was on
top of the CKSL building (downtown on Richmond St west side between York and
King) and we made a little EP, but we were supposed to make an album, but it
just kept going on and on. We did more than that, but not enough to make a
whole album, so they just picked those 4 to put on an EP. They had these lame
engineer guys from Fanshawe. And this kept going on and we kept going up there,
like what the hell, let’s just keep doing tunes. That was in February 1978.
D: Ya, Phil
Chedore, I think that was the guy that was up there. It was cool, he gave us a
lot of free reign up there. That’s where the EP came from, but nobody seems to
have any of the rest of it. Maybe they used the masters and recorded over them,
you could do that back then. That was a great experience. We did that song,
‘Don’t You Just Know It’ and I had a copy of it on cassette somewhere. It was a
good studio experience up there with those guys, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I
love studio time.
WW: So you put
the first 7” EP yourself?
F: Yep, we did
maybe 1000 copies or 500. We sold them off stage and that kinda thing.
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| EP that was recorded at Awes Studio. There was no picture sleeve |
J: Ya, we kind of
did an end runner on those guys, cause they weren’t coming through for us. We
actually drove to Toronto Toronto London Toronto
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| Blue Boot poster courtesy What Wave Archives |
WW: So why did
you do your own record, was it because of the punk bands at the time doing their
own records?
F: No, we just
wanted to do something. We never got a contract or anything. We always thought
if we wanted to do something, we’d have to do it ourselves. I would even have
cassettes of the band, I thought they sounded really good and I’d take them
down to CKSL (local AM top 40 radio station) and they would just throw me out.
They didn’t want nothing to do with it. And then I’d say, ‘how about playing
some local stuff’ and they’d say ‘we play all the hits all the time’, is what
the guy used to say to me on the phone. That just means you’re just following
the rest of the world, so why don’t you just play some local stuff. And he’d
say ‘I’ll tell you what we do, we play all the hits all the time’…and he kept
repeating that. And I said ‘OK’, and I started getting really despondent about
the whole music scene. Like what are you supposed to do, how are you supposed
to crack the scene, are you supposed to get a manager and this and that?
.
WW: Were you guys
working non music jobs at the time?
F: No, I wanted
to do music full time. I think Dexter used to get the odd job working, cause he
used to go through money like crazy…laughter. At that time around 77/78 we just
did it boom, whole hog, all music. At that point I thought, I’m not in any more
blues bands, I’m in a rock’n’roll band. That’s what I referred to us as. If
somebody said ‘what do you do?’ I’d say ‘we play rock’n’roll’…that’s it’. And
then we started getting a really big following and it was pretty exciting too.
J: Because you’ve got Frank out there and he’s
moving and grooving and we’re jiving each other and stuff. Frank lost a lot of
weight and stuff and he looked good. So visually, it was much, much better and
we were just getting tighter and tighter and choosing better, tight little
rock’n’roll songs and originals that fit. You know, we did ‘High School’ by The
MC5 and stuff like that. So then, we
were getting this big following at The Cedar Lounge (formerly The Blue Boot
Hotel). We had this little residency there by now, and we got this for groups
(not the bluegrass and folk stuff). So one time we had this out of town gig but
we didn’t want to lose the residency, so we said we’ll get a band for you.
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| Poster What Wave Archives |
F: We knew all of
those bands that were starting up, like The
Demics and stuff. We were friends with those guys, even before they played.
J: So I said,
Keith (Whittaker of The Demics) how about your band? And I said Keith, what about this, cause he
was bugging us and said he had a band and he had the accent and I said why
don’t we get your band to play? More or less as a joke, cause we didn’t know
anything about them and it was sort of a put up or shut up. They had played one
or 2 gigs, maybe up in a loft (Mike Niederman’s loft December 1977) or an art
opening or something. And I said play for the public, play downtown!
F: (Aug 78
approx). I went to Chester, the guy who owned the place (Blue Boot), I said
’give these guys a chance, cause this is gonna be new stuff’, he said ‘I
dunno’, even when we went from the bluegrass to rock’n’roll, ‘I dunno about
that’. I said’ take a look at your
books, if you’re interested in money’ and he did and he said ‘well OK’ so they (The Demics) got a job and the whole
place went completely wide open.
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| Poster What Wave Archives |
J: But what
happened, is that it all came out of the woodwork, all of the punks, everybody
who was secretly aspiring to be a punk showed up for these guys and the rest is
history. It didn’t blow up in our face, it was just good all around.
WW: So you would
alternate weekends with those guys…
J: Ya, so we
could both fill the place. And the best thing was, the cross over audience. At
first it was, what the fuck is this stuff? And I’d go, this is rock’n’roll and
people were dancing and people were grooving. So their audience would come over
and see us and our audience would go to see them, the bikers and those guys.
And there’d be no reason to be afraid of those guys, it’s just fun. A lot of
posing and a lot of poseurs. We got them in the door, but they did the rest
themselves (The Demics packing The Cedar Lounge), I wouldn’t take anything away
from them.
F: Then it was
everything after that, like NFG (local
punk combo) came in and started playing. And all of those guys really dug us,
they’d come out to see us play, the cowboys (some early punks dressed like
cowboys) and Keith Whittaker and those guys used to come out and see us lots
too. We’d jam and they’d get on stage and stuff. I remember Keith coming up to
jam with us, doing some Elvis Costello
tunes and stuff like that or Nick Lowe
songs. But I can’t remember them (Demics) doing a gig with us, unless it was at
the Polish Hall…
J: Oh ya, we
played a few gigs with them. We played one big gig with them at the Polish
Hall, a Halloween gig with them, 78 or 79. And we alternated sets with them,
because we didn’t know who was the headliner and we had our mutual respect. By
that time I was hanging out a lot with Keith and Lyndon (Andrews, local artist
who did many of the posters for both bands), we’d go to the York almost every
day and drink draught and play crib. They (Demics) had 4 guys, they had good
chemistry, they were reasonable good rock’n’roll guys. They were cool and we
hung out a lot. We did a gig in Toronto at the Horseshoe with us, The Demics and The Regulators (another London new wave/punk band). There was
hardly anyone there. That’s where I asked the guy to turn down the monitors and
Whittaker couldn’t believe it, that I had too much monitor. He was always like
‘MORE MONITOR!!”…that’s always a joke with Frank. These guys had no dues, they
just came up from out of nowhere and suddenly they can hire a PA guy and have a
big loud sound. They sounded good because they rented a PA every time because
they weren’t concerned about the money. I used to go down and see those guys
and I enjoyed myself.
WW: So you guys
went up to Thunder Bay (in Northern Ontario) to play?
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| Courtesy of Jack Whiteside |
D: Ya, we did a
couple of shows for Greenpeace in Thunder
Bay
It was really cool though, cause we also did some club dates
up there, which really in a way defines a fan base. We did this one place
called Bunnies Motor Inn, in Thunder
Bay London Thunder Bay London Thunder Bay Lake Superior . Time to get some suits involved in this
rock’n’roll.
Here's a link to Part 1, the beginnings:
https://radiowhatwave.blogspot.com/2020/01/uranus-bandinterview-part-1_26.html
Here's a link to Part 3....Uranus and Management:
https://radiowhatwave.blogspot.com/2020/01/uranus-bandinterview-part-3.html
Here's a link to Part 3....Uranus and Management:
https://radiowhatwave.blogspot.com/2020/01/uranus-bandinterview-part-3.html
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