May 16, 1970: Week-End Trip
A month after writing up The Road back in 1970, I’m back in booking agent/manager Fred Saia’s office on Niagara Falls Boulevard interviewing his No. 2 group:
May 16, 1970
Developing
Its Own
Sound
Of
course, it’s all spontaneous, but The Week-End Trip says that somehow the same
things always happen at Bobby Sherman concerts.
Seven
times they’ve been his back-up band. Seven times they’ve finished their own
set, watched the auditorium black out and heard the screaming start.
They’ve
probed blindly for the right first chord, singer Bob Culver has wondered how
he’ll find the mike to hand to Bobby, and when he sings his first note a
thousand cameras go FLASH! Like the brightest strobe light you’ve ever seen.
* * *
INTO THE screaming and the flashbulbs Bobby sings his
million-selling hits – “Hey, Little Woman,” “La-La-La” and “Easy Come, Easy Go”
– plus some other things before he runs off stage and a gaggle of girls charges
the police line.
“Sometimes
the group even gets mobbed,” says
* * *
THE ENTIRE Saia office focuses on Rick. He has no answer, just a
shy grin beneath his round-rimmed glasses.
“He
loved every minute of it,” Bob Culver laughs.
“I
don’t know if you guys’ve had this,” organist Ned Wood ventures, “but the
screaming is so loud it gets in your ears.” He shakes his curly head. “I could
hear it later when we were in the truck.”
“Yeah,”
says Bob, “sometimes in the shower I can still hear it.”
“It
was terrible in
* * *
ALONG WITH official business, there’s a couple packs of potato
chips on Fred’s desk and Karen, the blonde secretary, raids a refrigerator
somewhere for cans of pop.
We’ve
started talking without the twins and they still haven’t shown up. Steve calls
“Can
I have somebody page Tom and Rick Ryan?”
He
lowers the phone.
“That
was weird. She said, ‘Forget it,’ and hung up.”
* * *
ANYWAY, in seven appearances with Bobby Sherman, the group has seen him seven
times – usually just on stage. But they dig working with him and they
especially dig traveling.
“The
first couple of shows we weren’t really together,” Steve says. “But it got so
we were working off him and he was working off us.”
“He
gave us all a real fair shake,” Bob adds. “We’d sing back-up and he’d come over
and make sure each of us would get some of his spotlight.”
“The
last night we cornered him,” Steve says. “He signed some posters for us and
said he wanted to work with us some more.”
Fred
says this may mean a trip to
“But
the biggest thing is just the experience of going on the road,” Bob exclaims.
“A
meal and a half a day and four hours of sleep,” Steve interjects. “You know,
the
* * *
THE GROUP was barely five months together when it first backed
Bobby Sherman at the 1969 WKBW Fun-A-Fair. Fred had just become their manager
and Bobby Sherman’s manager called and wanted a back-up band.
“He
kind of liked the guys at that time,” Fred recalls, “and this year the manager
called me up and said: ‘Can we have that group that backed Bobby up last
year?’”
So
the group got a list of songs to learn and after shows in
“We
had this feeling his songs weren’t US at first,” Steve says, “but knowing him
and knowing what he’s gonna do makes a difference. We really like the songs
now.”
* * *
THE LANKY Ryan twins finally arrive with Steve’s brother, Danny
Loncto, the group’s equipment handler. Rick, the bass player, wears glasses.
Tom, the drummer, doesn’t.
Student
demonstrations held them up. They start work on the potato chips. Bob and Ned,
who looks like a relative of Harpo Marx and Larry of the Three Stooges, kid Tom
for cutting his hair.
The
Bobby Sherman experience has left them all in a funny position. They’ve been
well received when they’ve played their own material in other cities, but they
feel they’ve gotten a teenybop image at home.
“In
* * *
TO BOOST their local fortunes, Fred tried to bring a record
out in February – Steve’s “The Right Side of Time” and the Beatles’ “You’re
Gonna Lose That Girl.”
The
demonstration copies got local radio play, but no national record company
picked up on it.
“I
was real nervous at the recording session,” Ned recalls. “I was playing piano
and I missed the second note. So then I was thinking real hard. I have to think
hard – and after that my hands just kept going in the right places.”
The
tour changed their conception of their music, they say. Accused of sounding
like The Road before, they’re forging their own sound now in evening practices in
Ned’s basement. Reworking “Celebrate,” “No Sugar Tonight” and Buffalo
Springfield’s “Bluebird,” working up some more of Steve’s original songs.
“We
used to get a song and do it like the record,” Steve says. “Now we like to
change them around. We like to show what WE can do.”
They’ll
be showing at
* * *
MEANWHILE, the aura of the Bobby Sherman thing hangs around
them like a mixed and powerful blessing. Like what Steve says happened to him
in
“This
kid comes up to me and says: ‘Easy Come, Easy Go, ha ha ha!’
“I
said: ‘Yeah, but I’ve played here.’”
The
kid didn’t have an answer for that.
The
box/sidebar:
The Name Has
Stuck
Some
pertinent and impertinent information about The Week-End Trip:
Bob
Culver, 20, singer, a Leo, graduate of
Ned
Wood, 18, organist, an Aries, also Kenmore West.
Rick
Ortolano, 18, singer, a Capricorn, a
Steve
Loncto, 21, guitarist, also a Capricorn, a Kenmore East graduate, goes to
Rick
and Tom Ryan, both 18, both Sagittarians. Rick, the bass player, is a Bishop
Fallon graduate. Tom, the drummer, transferred from Fallon to Bennett his
junior year. Both go to
* * *
RICK, NED and the Ryan twins formed the group in January in
1969. Ned had been in The Rising Dead, the Ryans in The Sidewalk Concession.
Rick had sung with various high school groups.
Bob
and Steve joined after the first Bobby Sherman back-up in May 1969. Bob was
with the Soul Brothers, Steve was with the Six Pact (which gave three members
to The Road), then was equipment manager for The Road.
* * *
“WE WERE kind of hung up for a name,” Rick Ryan says, “because
we had some jobs and all. So a kid gave us a list of names – mostly
contradictory things – but we picked this one.
“We
kinda stuck with it ‘cause we got good reaction to it. But really, you know,
the name isn’t the most important thing anyway.”
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