Sept. 2, 1972: What's in a name? They're in Heaven.
Everywhere you looked back in 1972, there was a great little band with great big aspirations.
Sept. 2, 1972
Heaven: Raised Up From Humble Beginnings
WHENEVER PEOPLE
come down to the basement to see the group practice, the thing they always pick
up on is this sign on a ceiling rafter a couple inches above their heads.
Pete Militello, the drummer,
made it up about the time Heaven got started in this same Town of
It’s a quote Pete found in a
Rolling Stone interview with Frank Zappa: “Most people wouldn’t know good music
if it came up and bit them …”
* * *
ANY MUSICIAN
who puts up a sign like that has to share Zappa’s disdain of people who ask
them to do “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” but it also obliges that musician to be good.
Or trying awful hard to get that way.
It’s apparent that the Zappa
inspiration took root in Heaven as they churn expressively through Crosby,
Stills & Nash’s “Long Time Coming.”
Lead singer Mike Ruffino
trades barrel-chested verses with lanky, high-voiced guitarist Don Marien. Bass
guitarist Russ Vara adds a third voice to enrich the chorus.
Pete Militello’s generously
heavy drumming and Russ Vara’s bass make for a solid underpinning. Paul
Demeter’s Hammond L-100 giving things a fluid Leslied warble (later on, he gets
to do that churchy organ part in “Whiter Shade of Pale.”).
* * *
“THIS ISN’T
the same as when we play out someplace,” Mike apologizes. There isn’t room here
for the energetic tricks they play on stage. Particularly guitarist Don Marien.
“When he throws his Les Paul
up,” Mike Ruffino says, “you see everybody’s jaw just drop. We made him up a
40-foot cord after he kept pulling the plug out.”
Don used to do a Jimi Hendrix
gimmick too, playing the strings with his teeth until it earned him a cap on
one of them. These days he favors Ten Years After’s Alvin Lee, soloing on that
tasty edge of amplification where notes sustain and bend.
“I would go see a band if I
knew they were just gonna stand there and play,” Don says. “There’s got to be
performance.”
No surprise that they all dig
Jethro Tull and all have tickets for the upcoming Tull concert at the Aud. That
was part of the reason for bringing nimble sax player Jim Witherspoon into the
group a month ago. He also could play flute for their three Tull numbers.
The spirit behind that Zappa
quote helped bring Heaven up from its humble beginnings – a basement band that
was only going to stay together for Christmas vacation 1970.
By the next May, Paul’s
father, Joseph Demeter, an architectural engineer for J. W. Cowper Co., had
enough faith in their intentions to help them fill half the basement with amps
and speakers, including a Voice of the Theater PA and several things he built
cabinets for. The band pays for them as it gets jobs.
* * *
THEY GET
jobs three ways – through Mary Stock, a booking agent who works in the same
insurance office as Russ’ father, via Mr. Demeter, or as the result of Pete
Militello’s enthusiastic promotion. The band calls his attaché case full of
leaflets and pictures “Pete’s bag of tricks.”
Last October Pete got the
group the job he’d dreamed of getting since he was a freshman at
“I knew the kid who arranged
the dances,” Pete says, “and we played that one for free with The Road. We
played there two more times and had the featured spot.”
For that
“Everybody wanted to do their
own thing,” Paul says. “After we brought Don in and went down to five guys, our
ideas got a lot tighter.”
* * *
THESE DAYS
there’s a few arguments, everybody’s pretty much responsible for his own
arrangements and it all falls into a broad groove that stretches from the
heavier country rock like “The Weight” to a couple Grand Funk numbers.
A song like Arlo Guthrie’s
“Comin’ in to
* * *
THEIR STAGE
antics generally earn them a healthy crowd of watchers as well as dancers and
the fun doesn’t stop when they leave the stage.
After a gig, they and their
five equipment handlers stage a breakfast party at a place on
And riding in the back of a
rental truck is good for a few adventures too. Like Chinese fire drills or that
winter night when Paul slid across the icy floor and out the back at a traffic
light, then ran like mad to catch it while the others in back pounded on the
truck cab to get it stopped.
They’ve played other high
schools – Kenmore West, Bishop Neumann – outdoors for the March on Hunger and
“Before we went on, they
asked us if we were going to donate,” Paul says. “We said no and they told us
we could only do one number. So we did ‘Down by the River’ and it lasted 10
minutes. They kept going, ‘Cut!’”
For all their stage antics,
they’re as serious about their music as Zappa is. Pete and Jim both play in the
St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute Lab Band, fourth in the East in competition
in Boston this spring, and Pete, meanwhile, won a separate national music
award.
Both plan to apply for
college music schools,
“If I never make it playin’,” Pete says, “I wanta be a booking agent. But I really wanta make it playin’.”
The box/sidebar:
Putting It Together
Pertinent information on
Heaven:
Mike Ruffino, 17, vocals,
Don Marien, 18, guitar and
vocals,
Russ Vara, 19, bass guitar
and vocals, Cardinal O’Hara, sophomore at
Paul Demeter, 16, organ,
senior at Kenmore West.
Jim Witherspoon, 17, sax and
flute, senior at
Pete Militello, 17, drums,
senior at St. Joe’s.
* * *
RUSS DECIDED
after they asked him to play over Christmas vacation 1970 that if this band
didn’t work out, he’d give it all up.
He’d been in groups with Phil
since 1967, five or six of them altogether, few of which ever saw a stage. The
most successful was Horsemeat. It played seven gigs.
Paul had been in one of them,
U-238, and that’s the name. Pete and Russ joined with Mike, a schoolmate of
Paul’s, and three others to form a seven-man group.
That lasted until February,
when Don, a veteran of New York Freeway who went to school with Russ, replaced
two other guitarists and a singer. Pete brought Jim in last month to add a
touch of color and variety to the sound.
* * *
THE NAME Heaven
was Mike’s idea. “What does Heaven mean to me?” he grins. “What does Heaven
mean to you?”
“What I like about it,” Paul
says, “is when somebody comes up and says: ‘You’re in Heaven.’ And I just go:
‘Yeah-h-h!’”
* * * * *
IN THE PHOTO:
Heaven, from left, Pete Militello, Don Marien, Paul Demeter (kneeling), Mike
Ruffino, Russ Vara and Jim Witherspoon.
* * * * *
FOOTNOTE: Drummer Pete Militello is in Cock Robin, still
playing. He did indeed go to music school –
Saxman Jim Witherspoon kept playing too. He was with
the Dick Bauerle Group in the early 1980s.
Bass guitarist Russ Vara went on to get a degree in computer science
from Buffalo State in the 1980s and has been in sales at a number of office
equipment and computer technology companies since then, LinkedIn reports. Most
recently, he’s been a senior account executive with Synergy IT Solutions, which
is based in Victor.
Comments
Post a Comment