Jan. 29, 1972: Lavender Hill breaks up

 

Feels like finding an entry in a diary. I suspect that the skeptical commentator at the beginning is one of my oldest and dearest friends, Barbara Rose (now Barbara Hales), who was guitarist Ron Magrum’s ex-girlfriend. 

Jan. 29, 1972 

Lavender Hill ‘Mob’

Breaking Up – Finale

Monday at Buffalo State 

She raised her eyebrows. “A story about the break-up of Lavender Hill? Don’t make me laugh. The group always had this exaggerated sense of its own importance. Who’ll care besides some groupies in Kenmore?”

I said I thought it might show something about groups breaking up. She gave me a disgusted look. The look she’ll probably wear to their final Buffalo gig Monday night.

* * *

THE BREAK-UP might have come three months ago except restless drummer Paul Ladner couldn’t leave for California because of a new complication in his draft appeal and guitarist Ron Magrum’s Toronto booking contact came through with six nights in a Whitby, Ont., hotel – $1,050 plus room.

        They were calling themselves Bacchanal. “That’s Canadian for Lavender Hill,” Ron winked.

        They worked up some Carole King tunes and other soft items, cut down the on-stage tuning and tightened up the act. Singer and pianist Kathie Notley wanted to see if she could stand doing night club music.

        “We learned a whole lot from that,” she says. “We found out we didn’t have to do one kind of thing to enjoy ourselves. I don’t put people down for playing softer, more confined music now. It might be my only way of doing it for a while.”

* * *

LADNER LEFT two weeks ago and Lavender Hill called their former drummer, Carlo Cavaiuolo, away from his Lockport group to fill in for this $600 high school dance in Allegany. It was going to be their last gig.

        “All the way home we were talking about how good it was,” Kathie says.

        “I was getting all these rhythm guitar things with Carlo,” guitarist Bill Rehberg adds. “It was never that crisp with Ladner. And those kids really dug us.”

        They said no to four weeks in Canada next month, but decided to pick up a job Ron had lined up in Syracuse this coming Tuesday.

        And for good measure, they’d arranged something at Buffalo State. They turned down last night because Carlo’s band was busy. Instead, they’ve set a four-hour finale at 8 p.m. Monday in the Student Union Social Room.

        Going down that old alley to the leaning backyard cottage in Buffalo’s Black Rock section, you kind of home in on guitars and drums jamming some blues. No practice last week, but now they’re going to work. This is the first night.

        “Well, Carlo had to set up his drums,” Kath says, a bit exasperated, “and we’re still tuning up. You know how it goes.”

        Tuning up took a long time back in July 1970. In that, my final month as bass player with the group, there also were these other discouragements:

        – A booking agent who strung us along by promising dates and then changing them.

        – A foul-up in arrangements to play in front of a national group at Melody Fair.

        – A local record producer interested in our original songs, but not in recording the group.

        – A New York City talent agency that said that maybe if we all dressed alike or, better yet, got a record out, then maybe they could do something.

        Four years of compromises and fizzled-out deals so we could play boogieing barrooms and high school dances. Why weren’t we working up something original? Why weren’t we promoting ourselves more?

* * *

LAVENDER HILL’S first downstate venture came after they played a UB party on Jewett Parkway last spring. Someone there from Syracuse told a booking agent who got them into Syracuse University’s Wooden Ships Festival.

        Since then, aside from appearances at The Pub at Buff State, they’ve done most of their playing in Central New York.

        “We were very cloistered,” Ron comments. “It always seemed like we were above the Buffalo scene, but I think it was because we were afraid to get down and wallow in it. We were too uptight.”

        “Since we’re breaking up,” Bill remarks, “it seems like we’re in contact with a lot of Buffalo musicians all of a sudden. We’re jamming with people now. We never used to.

        “Jobs around Buffalo are getting harder and harder to find. Bars have gone much more commercial or really Top 40 or else they’re playing records.

        “We haven’t played bars in Buffalo in a long time, since before the summer.”

* * *

THIS MUST be what probating a will feels like, I thought, sitting around that Black Rock cottage kitchen table two weeks ago with Kathie, Bill, Ron, Carlo and bass guitarist Paul Griffin.

        Unlike a lot of groups, we’d bought much of our equipment collectively. Everything had to be divided according to how much everyone put into it. Luckily, Kath and Bill kept records of it.

        Excluding the truck and the PA, it took us five hours to figure shares in stuff we’d paid about $5,000 for. Some took part of it in equipment – whatever they needed to solo.

        I’d come prepared for mourning, fighting and confusion. Instead, we’d all thrown ourselves into removing the last thing in the way of breaking up. I walked out the alley amazed that it felt so good.

* * *

BREAKING UP was an unthinkable thought when I quit, but by last June, when Carlo left to go to his native Italy and bassist Joe Kress split in a personal hassle, it was a regular topic.

        Bringing in Griffin, an old friend of Ron’s from Niagara County, and Ladner, an ex-Buff State student from New York City, seemed to unify them musically, but something was wrong.

        “It was a very down summer,” Ron says. “The group had lost its forward motion. We were trying to keep together just to keep eating.”

        By September, California was calling Ladner. Kath, fighting chronic hoarseness, wanted to quit singing to see if that would cure it. Everyone had an escape plan and everyone’s plan seemed to change every day. The group was in a frenzy.

* * *

KATHIE HAD two offers from local groups this month. One was from Moose Jaw, now at Maxl’s on Main Street, and the other was J. R. Weitz, which began last Sunday as the first rock band to play Gabriel’s Gate.

        “They’ve got that total commitment I always wanted with Lavender Hill,” Kath was saying, “but now I don’t know if I want it any more. Right now, I just want to rest my voice.”

        Kath was a teletypist at Sears 3½ years ago, Bill was studying to be a music teacher and Ron left Fredonia State only to find temporary meaningless jobs.

        If the group did anything, it convinced them that music is the only life worth living. And the Canadian hotel gig clinched it.

        “It showed us we could be performers,” Kath says. “Now I think I’ll be able to walk into any musical situation relaxed and say I’m a singer and this is how I sing and if you like it – good. I used to think: ‘Here’s my chance.’ Now I see there’s no such thing as one chance.”

* * *

KATH RAIDED her savings and bought the van from the group. She and Bill will look up Ladner in San Diego, then go to Mexico “to live off the land for a while.” They may or may not get into a musical venture together.

        Until prospects fell through, Ron was going to Toronto. Now he’s ready to move into the backyard cottage and get a band together. Griffin will join him and they’ll call themselves Babylon.

        Carlo’s already got a band – Rodney & The Blazers – playing the Park Inn in Lockport on weekends. Carlo’s happy with the music, but the act is pretty loose. He thinks they’d make it big if they went to Italy.

* * *

THEY WERE polishing up Bob Dylan’s “Let The River Flow,” guitars wailing over the bouncing bass, piano and drums. Three times and it still speeded up and ended funny. It was easy to take a break for some of the bread Kath just took from the oven.

        “You know,” Ron said, reaching for the raspberry jam, “sometimes a break-up can really be ugly. But with us, everything’s getting on better now than it ever did before.” 

Once again, no box/sidebar. 

PHOTO CAPTION: Lavender Hill as Bacchanal – from left, guitarist Ron Magrum, singer Kathie Notley, drummer Paul Ladner, bass guitarist Paul Griffin and guitarist Bill Rehberg.

* * * * * 

FOOTNOTE: I continued to be part of the group’s communal Thanksgiving in San Diego for three years, getting there via marathon cross-country Cannonball Run drives in an aging Porsche 356c, but that’s another story. Kathie and Bill set up housekeeping in what was then a tie-dyed hippie enclave in Ocean Beach and weren’t involved in anything serious musically.  

        Kath had an apartment in Berkeley by herself for a few years after that, then took her electric piano further north to Seattle, where she wrote songs, played informally and was much loved for her New Age spirit. She died in 2016, shortly after she was diagnosed with cancer.

Bill also wound up in the Pacific Northwest, in Tacoma. I didn’t connect with him, but Kath once said he was married, managing an apartment house and leading a bunch of younger guys in a band.

        Ron stayed in Buffalo and I saw him regularly before he got married. He became a city building inspector, eventually the chief building inspector, and died suddenly in 1996. As for Carlo, he stayed in Lockport and opened up a dental lab.