Dec. 18, 1971: Rotary Bed

 

        You might think this band’s name came from the pages of a men’s magazine, but noooooo … 

Dec. 18, 1971 

‘Rotary Bed’ Band

Keeps Rollin’ Along

To ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ 

        A friend, a rock guitarist, heard Rotary Bed last month and didn’t much like them. Maybe it was a bad night – everybody gets those – because something says he’d be pretty lonely in that opinion on this particular Wednesday night.

        Suspicions rise over his condemnations during a perfectly natural version of “Them Changes” which accompanies you as you squeeze through the crowd to the bar with its wall of college-Saxon simulated wooden draft beer barrels here at the Poorhouse East on Main Street, just beyond Transit Road in Clarence.

        Secure with a draft, you can concentrate on how smooth and, well, unheavy the band is. Echo on the high voices, a little wah-wah guitar here and there and an unpretentious organ break.

* * *

WHILE THEY take a rest, there’s the jukebox to examine. And how about that, down in the right hand corner – 177 and 277. “You Are You” and “Waiting” by Rotary Bed.

        They start up again with a Rascals song, “Love Is a Beautiful Thing,” only they say “sex” instead of “love.” It might upset Rascals purists, if there were any here.

        “Do you want to hear a Christmas song?” organist Tom Mayers asks the dancers. Nobody expects one, but Tom sings and noodles out the start of “Jingle Bell Rock” and it gets enough momentum to pick up the rest of the band for a verse before they all let it go in laughter.

        Tom carries most of the lead singing and instrumentals while his brother Paul looks detached between harmonies and wah-wah guitar licks.

* * *

DESPITE BASS guitarist Joel Heckman’s efforts, the group still lacks a full bottom – maybe it’s the high harmony. And Gary Jones, who’s assigned the highest harmonies, drums with his boots off.

        “Different shoes give the drums a different feel,” he’ll tell you. “Your feet don’t change.”

        “We have a good time here,” Tom says when the set finishes. “And we have a really loyal crowd, same people week after week. They’ll play our record on the jukebox five, six times a night.”

        Of course, that unfamiliar pop song with the high four-part harmony and the nicely-turned organ solo, that was “You Are You.” Tom’s melody and Joel’s wife’s intelligently Top 40 lyrics.

        It was recorded in July up at Brundo’s in the Falls, their first time in a studio. They spent so much time trying to get it sounding right they only had an hour to put down “Waiting.” The jukebox record is a demo.

* * *

“WAITING” SOUNDS like an early ‘60s song about a girl who’s gone for good. Gary did the words and Tom says the music he wrote for them just came out that way.

        The Brundo’s visit came after Joel fixed a cash register there. Another cash register repair on Grant Street in Buffalo allowed Joel to check out Sound & Stage Studios, where an improved eight-track version of “You Are You” is in the works.

        The rough mix shows no flaws after the fourth hearing a few nights later in Joel’s house south of Lockport. But it seems like something is missing. Tom says they’re going to add more harmony, piano and guitar. What it also needs is bass, the group agrees.

        Rotary Bed has worked their way out of commercial music gigs (they once filled in a week for Joe Jeffrey at the Three Coins after Joel paid a service call there) and into the rock they’d learned for the pleasure of it.

* * *

REQUESTS got them playing more and more rock until they figured to do it full time. Joel thinks the high harmonies and attention to Top 40 work is to their advantage.

        “And it’s more fun playing to people our own age,” Tom says, recalling old wedding gigs.

        They became Poorhouse East’s first band ever early last summer – another Joel repair job – and they appear Wednesdays, Sundays and New Year’s Eve.

        His talent for talking to clubowners has made Joel unofficial road manager, taking over from Tom, who had gotten the group’s previous 11-month stay in Buffalo, which ended with the theft and recovery of $4,000 in equipment.

* * *

WHEN THEY finish the new tape of “You Are You,” they plan to give it to an Atlantic Records agent Gary knows in Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, they plan to keep their day jobs, playing two or three nights a week.

        “If you don’t know if you’re going anywhere, you need it for security for your wife and kids,” Joel says. “If the record was to go really good, we could all take leaves of absence to give it a good shot.” 

The box/sidebar: 

Started at Weddings 

Pertinent information about Rotary Bed:

        Tom Mayers, 22, organ, piano and lead vocalist, Bennett High School, attended Niagara County Community College and UB nights, apprentice printer, engaged.

        Paul Mayers, 24, guitar and vocals, Tom’s brother, Bennett High, driver for Niagara Mohawk Power Corp., single.

        Joel Heckman, 24, bass guitar, flute and vocals, Clarence High, attended Erie Community College, cash register repairman, married, two children.

        Gary Jones, 25, drums and vocals, Royalton-Hartland High, Air Force Band veteran, works at Harrison Radiator in Lockport, married.

* * *

THE NUCLEUS is Tom and Paul, who began by playing commercial gigs and weddings with their uncle, a drummer, learning rock songs on the side for their own pleasure.

        Joel, with experience in The Mixed Emotions and a number of country bands, approached the three-man Rotary Bed in 1968 at a club near Lockport and sold them on having a bass player.

        “He said the organ foot pedals couldn’t get enough bass sound,” Tom says. Joel knew Gary, who was just out of the Air Force.

* * *

THEIR SIGN, “Hop on the Rotary Bed,” may suggest a Hugh Hefner custom lounge, but it really came out of a previous drummer’s work at Bethlehem Steel.

        There’s a big wheel at the plant where nine runs of steel go to be straightened and it’s called a Nine Run Rotary Bed. The group dropped the Nine Run to make the name easier to remember. It worked.

* * * * *

THE PHOTOS: Bass guitarist Joel Heckman, left. The Mayers brothers, at the top, guitarist Paul, left, and organist Tom, right. Drummer Gary Jones, lower right.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: Organist Tom Mayers is still playing. According to an online post in 2017 about a song he recorded, he and a subsequent bassist, John Swanson, have been bandmates for many years. The posting also notes that Rotary Bed was long popular in Lockport and Olcott.

Drummer Gary Jones, meanwhile, is the mainstay of Jonesie and the Cruisers, a classic rock band equally active in Niagara and Orleans counties. They are fondly celebrated for their warm-up set at the annual Terry Corners Summer Sizzler, during which they would toss beers to crowd.