April 25, 1970: Saint Hill

                 For young Buffalonians seeking self-improvement and enlightenment in 1970, Scientology was an attractive path. Some of the members of the city’s leading band, The Road, were exploring it. A couple players in the band I was in, Lavender Hill, did some introductory auditing, but its strictures, including the rule against smoking pot, only gave us more things to argue about. Our Scientology initiates said everything would be fine if we all joined them. It seemed to be working that way for the group I interviewed at end of April that year. 

Saturday, April 25, 1970

Saint Hill Keeps

Comm Lines Open

 There are usually three things that can lift a group into having a good night. A big crowd, a lot of dancers and a lot of rest the night before.

Saint Hill was in Aliotta’s last Sunday night without any of these, but it sure was hard to tell.

“We’re going to play an old Elvis Presley song,” grins lead singer Steve Chalmer, holding an ever-present cigarette. “We won’t tell you what it is. You’ll know.”

It’s “Jailhouse Rock.” Haven’t heard that in months. They change tempo in the middle, then bring it back for the finish. Some of the crowd claps.

* * *

“WE’RE THERE to relate to the crowd, to communicate,” Steve was saying a few afternoons earlier. “It’s best when you get a really good comm cycle going.”

Comm cycle?

Steve explains.

“I say: ‘That’s an ashtray.’ You say: ‘Yeah, that’s an ashtray.’ And that’s a comm cycle. A unit of communication. We’re having it right now.”

It all comes from Scientology, which is another thing about Saint Hill. The whole group has gone through the first Scientological course, which is supposed to break down individual communications barriers.

* * *

THAT particular afternoon we’re jammed around Steve’s kitchen table – Steve’s parents’ kitchen table, actually – and everybody’s really getting it on.

There’s Steve, guitarist Mick Thompson, red-haired bass player John Yuknalis, new drummer Bill Friday, thin blond-haired Alex Cornell, the group’s new manager, and Sydney Firman, Mick’s girl and group secretary. All communicating like crazy.

What comes across in that yellow-tiled North Buffalo kitchen is enthusiasm. For Alex. For their new name. For Scientology. For their music. For each other.

* * *

“OUR BIGGEST change came three weeks ago when we added Alex,” Steve says. “One of the first things he said was: ‘You guys have a product and I’m going to sell it.’”

“For a couple seconds I was delirious at how easy it would be,” Alex says.

So Alex has been selling and Saint Hill is working. Working at the WMU Club in Angola tonight and tomorrow. Checkpoint 8 (School 80, Eggert and Highgate) in the March on Hunger tomorrow afternoon. The Caboose in Fredonia next Wednesday. Gilligan’s next Friday. Jesse James on Niagara Falls Boulevard next Sunday afternoon. Buffalo’s C Lounge May 8. The Heater in Wellsville May 9 and Club Lakewood in Youngstown May 13.

* * *

THE GROUP has been Saint Hill for less than two weeks. Before that, they were Pharmacy Jones.

“Saint Hill Manor is where Scientology all originated,” Steve explains. “Scientologists will recognize the name and the man on the street will hear a celestial tone in it. When we were Pharmacy Jones, everybody’d think of drugs.”

“Drugs take you out of the present time,” Mike adds. “We’re all in the present time.”

* * *

THE ORIGINAL Pharmacy Jones was Mick and John and drummer Jim Eckert, who was drafted last June. They went through a succession of drummers until they met Bill at the Scientology Center.

Steve came along last fall – the ninth guy to answer an ad Mick and John put in The Spectrum, the State University of Buffalo newspaper.

Steve had been through a lot. He organized a folksong club at Bennett High School (“I loved work songs. I didn’t dig the philosophy, but I dug the beat”), enrolled in and dropped out of UB five times, attended the Royal Conservatory in Toronto, folk sang around Buffalo and did arrangements for Cisum Revival.

“He said, ‘I’ve been looking for you guys this-s-s-s-s long,’” Mick says.

* * *

“IT WASN’T the idea of the music,” Steve adds. “I would have played with them even if they were doing James Brown.”

“Actually, our minds have been together for years,” John observes.

To get themselves more together, they’re planning to rent a house near UB and live and practice there. Right now, John and Mick are in Alden and rehearsals are in Steve’s basement.

“When we move into the house, it’ll be really nice,” Steve says. “The idea is the more comm lines we have, the freer everybody is, the more solid everybody is.”

“Communications is the universal solvent,” Bill adds. “If something’s not going smoothly, we just comm about it and it clears things up.”

* * *

EVERYTHING gets commed. Each new song. Anybody who’s feeling down. Everybody’s daily schedules. All group decisions, which, incidentally, have to be unanimous.

“We’ve been able to apply a lot of Scientology principles in the band,” Mick says. “We were the first Scientology group in the area. We’re postulating we’ll be the first worldwide group from Buffalo.”

“The essence of art is communication,” Steve says. “It’s creating an effect in a person. The best artists know they’re creating an effect and know the effect they’re creating. It’s the idea of controlling the effect and getting ideas back from an audience.”

“We ask them to come up and talk to us,” John says. “About anything. We want to keep the comm lines open. It’s not the idea that people know us, but that we can know more people better.”

“That’s right,” Sydney adds. “Without them, there’s no us.”

 

And now the box/sidebar

 

New and Booming

 

Some pertinent and impertinent information about Saint Hill:

Steve Chalmer, 21, graduate of Bennett High School, five-time enrollee at UB and a six-month veteran of the Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto, songwriter, electric pianist and former arranger for Cisum Revival, “very single.”

Mick Thompson, 20, graduate of Alden High School, attended Mansfield, Pa., State College, goes with Syd, the group’s secretary.

John Yuknalis, 20, graduate of Sewickley High School in Hutchinson, Pa., a mining town near Pittsburgh, attended Mansfield State, single.

Bill Friday, 21, graduate of Amherst High School, goes to UB “for a while anyway,” single.

* * *

THE GROUP began May 30, 1968, as Pharmacy Jones, with Mick, John and a drummer now in the Marines. Steve has been with the group six months. Bill for three weeks.

Steve jumped from folk to rock because “with a group you can get subtly heavy.” He once played with The Lynx (“We were the essence of mediocrity. We were the finest mediocre band in the city.”).