An Interview With Craig Moore
60sgaragebands.com (60s): How did you first get interested in music?
Craig Moore (CM): My dad bought me a portable record player before I was even in kindergarten, and for whatever reason that just clicked. This would have been about 1952. I loved my records and played them constantly. As a kid I played my dad's only 78s, three of them: ‘Doggie In The Window’ and ‘Tennessee Waltz’ by Patti Page, and ‘Auld Lang Syne’ by Guy Lombardo. They were great and I must have driven everybody crazy with only three of those and a stack of kiddie records over and over and over. I had no concept at all of 'Auld Lang Syne' as a holiday record; it was just music. But then I started hearing Teresa Brewer and Harry Belafonte and Perry Como and then Elvis on the jukeboxes and on TV variety shows. I saw Elvis on Ed Sullivan in 1956, my Uncle Bill took me and cousin Susie to see Love Me Tender when it was a new movie. By the time I was eight or nine I was just in love with music of all sorts, period. In those days, and throughout the ‘50s and early ‘60s, there was no pigeon holing of styles on the radio - other than say, classical, or down south the race records, blues etc. - so even in Iowa I got to hear everything with no such ridiculous separation of styles. A good song was a good song - a hit was a hit - regardless. And Pat Boone was covering Little Richard, turning 'Tutti Fruiti' literally into a teenager’s favorite chewing gum, and Your Hit Parade on TV covered virtually everything. I consider it a blessing musically to have grown up when I did, and thank Dad for that record player. I was just old enough to be aware of the first wave of rock 'n roll and prime meat for the British Invasion. Praise the Lord, thank you mother.
60s: As a member of the Pagans, you merged with Rex Garrett and Brent Colvin to form Gonn. Where did you first learn of The Rogues?
CM: Brent Colvin answered our ad in the paper when Billy Harper and Larry quit The Pagans. I don't know what possessed us to run an ad in Fort Madison since we were from Keokuk, but we did and it seems to have been a damn good idea! We had never heard of any band from Fort Madison that I recall, except one called The Shadows. I played with the Shadows' guitar player, Gary Crank, some years later in a band called Joshua. His brother was Ronnie Crank, lead guitarist for The Stingrays, who cut a monster surf record in 1963 called ‘Sting Ray Stomp.’ But The Rogues were totally invisible until Brent called, and totally defunct after he called!
60s: Where and when was Gonn formed?
CM: Well, basically it was born in late spring 1966 outside Mike Berstler's house in Fort Madison the night Gerry, Gary and I went to see Brent. We stole Rex too, since he could play bar chords. For whatever reason we felt instantaneously like we were onto something, before we even had a practice. Brent and Rex had no idea who we were, I don't think, but we must have exuded confidence. We left there knowing this was it. We were still The Pagans for a brief bit but soon changed the name. We were 90% confidence and 10% ability, and we cleaned house on the other bands from the start just out of sheer energy and attitude. Ah…those were the days!
60s: Larry LeMaster and Dave Johnson replaced Gary and Brent in 1967...
CM: We were all young and cocky and I was probably the cockiest of them all at the start. We would just explode into arguments. It was The Byrds’ fault actually. On the liner notes to the Turn Turn Turn LP it's stated that they make these great records despite and thru ‘great awful mouthfuls of abuse’ (which was true!) and we sort of took anything The Byrds did as gospel so we had a no-holds-barred attitude both within and without the inner circle. But in the end Gary just got sick of me, I think, and Brent just was sort of tired of it I guess. He was always way out there, a real free radical, wearing his jeans for weeks on end, regularly breaking every cymbal, every drumhead.
I don't really remember why he quit to tell you the truth, but I think as unhappy as we were about it we all sort of didn't mind at the time... though he was hard to replace for sure. It was like Keith Moon leaving The Who - now what? Anyway, Larry had been following the band's progress and sort of regretted dumping us, I think, and I think he was as glad to come back as we were to have him back. Dave had been hanging out in the music shop I worked in and sort of sheepishly asked permission to audition. We had been through a lot of drummers before 'Pete' (his nickname) came along but once we heard him it was unanimous. No doubt about it, we had to make him the new kid.
60s: How would you describe the band's sound? What bands influenced you?
CM: I wish I could have recorded a gig. I think we must have been pretty damned awesome as garage bands go, especially in comparison to the slicker bands in the area. We were raw with a 'rave-up' mentality, and when Gary was in the band we could pull off three-part harmonies and the whole Byrds’ thing, garage-band style of course. I remember doing ‘He Was A Friend Of Mine’ with the original five (members) and getting chills every time. Gabel used to go out front and listen to us do ‘You Can't Judge A Book By The Cover’ and some stuff he didn't have to play on if he decided not to, and he always raved about it. I'm jealous; he saw the band. I never did. Gary saw the second generation a few times and says they were great. Larry says the same about the original, and that it made him wish he hadn't quit The Pagans! Ha! We were sort of soulmates to Brillo and The Firebirds out of Macomb, and I always thought we were in that league - loud, hard hitting and unique, although The Firebirds actually had musical training as players and always amazed us technically. For whatever reason we could readily relate to The Yardbirds, Raiders, Chocolate Watchband, Rolling Stones and Byrds more so than The Beatles, but it had been The Beatles that started Rex and me playing and I'm sure the other guys, too, to some extent. As we got better as players we got firmly into The Doors camp and California psych: Love, Clear Light and Kaleidoscope. I remember Gabel playing ‘Piper At The Gates Of Dawn’ for me in 1967 and I was totally intimidated. I thought, “We can't do that!” But maybe we could have…
60s: Where did the band typically play?
CM: Teen centers, YMCA, Knights Of Columbus, Sacred Heart Hall in Warsaw, Iowa State Fair three years in a row, dances, parties, 4-H halls, street dances and roller rinks - wherever we could as often as we could.
60s: How did you land the three Iowa State Fairs gigs?
CM: The first one was an audition. It was really bizarre with literally hundreds of bands all lined up next to each other in this gigantic exhibit building. I think each band had maybe ten minutes or less to play - in those days about three songs. The judges walked up and down the aisle after aisle of bands and stood right in front of each one and listened, made their notes, and moved on. It was very clinical and intimidating. If I recall, we got a letter in the mail saying we were among the chosen few. I believe we had to enter a semi-final audition, which we also passed, and went on to place very high at the fair, like #2 or #3. It was a major step forward for this band not (yet) even six months old. That day after the first audition we had a gig in Warsaw, Illinois, 150 miles away, all two-lane roads. We left Des Moines late in the afternoon and Gary drove the Hearse like a bat outta hell and we got to Warsaw just about the time we were supposed to start, with hundreds of kids milling around and the priest none too pleased. We got set up in a flash and I think we were only about 15 minutes late starting. This was the same venue and same priest later on with the Nazi flag story. The next two State Fairs I think we were invited to since we were in the top two or three that first year. It was so much fun. I'd like to go back and start over.
60s: Where there any direct consequences as a result of the ‘Nazi flag story’?
CM: Well, yes, actually. After that incident I had no real use for it, since I would not have hung it behind us again, and traded it off to a friend of mine for his black Jimi Hendrix-style hat, which I never wore and promptly lost. That flag is worth about $20,000 today. So the consequences were that I lost my ass on it.
60s: Whose idea was it to purchase a Pontiac Hearse for the band's vehicle?
CM: Hmmm. Well…I'm not sure who's idea it was but Rex's dad bought it for us, and when Larry rejoined the band he bought it to keep it in the family. We needed it, and it is part of the Ballad Of Gonn now. It had been used for my great aunt's funeral and when Rex showed up with it the first time at my house at dinnertime, I went out with my plate and sat in the back with the guys, and as I ate my subconcious went to work and I almost ralphed on it. I got over that quickly though and it was really a cool set of wheels for the band. A real chick magnet and the fans all thought we were just that much cooler for it. It had vacuum powered windshield wipers though, and could be somewhat dangerous to drive in wind or a rainstorm. We had great times with it and some real adventures.
60s: Gonn reportedly self-promoted many dances. Who was the primary organizer of those types of events?
CM: Gerry and I. We were Batman and Robin. We made everything happen. If we didn't have a gig we invented one.
60s: How far was the band's ‘touring’ territory?
CM: Pretty small. Iowa City was about as far as we went - 90 miles - though the Des Moines fair was 150 miles or so, Ottumwa about 90-100, Macomb about 50. I am amazed now, but we had no concept whatsoever of life beyond our immediate area, or that we could actually go- although if we had packed up and gone off to L.A. in 1967 we'd probably all be dead now. We knew no behavioral boundaries and that might have worked against us in a freer environment.
60s: Did Gonn have a manager?
CM: We didn't, no. I’m not sure we ever thought it was necessary. We approached a couple of agents for this or that but usually we got nowhere with that type so who needs 'em.
60s: What were the circumstances leading to the ‘Blackout of Gretely’ / ‘Pain In My Heart’ 45?
CM: This was the Gary/Brent line-up. We were very popular in Burlington, Iowa, and this would-be singer wanted to tie his little red wagon to us. He wanted us to back him up on a record and we agreed provided he paid for studio time for us to cut our own record. He never pressed his and we never heard that recording ever again. I talked to him about it 10-12 years ago and he has no idea where it went. It was ‘Kansas City’ and ‘C'Mon Everybody. We wrote ‘Blackout’ as I recall after we knew we were Gonna make a record.’ ‘Pain In My Heart’ was our cover of the Stones' cover of Otis Redding. We did two pressings of 300 copies each. I still had 75-100 of them in 1978, most of which I passed out to any traveling musician who came by the house who wanted one. They are all long 'gone' now...
60s: The singer was Bill Egan. How did you hook up with him?
CM: I think he might have had something to do with a teen center in Burlington, which gave him some sort of credibility with us I suppose. I'm proud to say we were skeptical enough to demand our own studio time out of the deal. It worked out rather well I think.
60s: What were the circumstances leading to the ‘Come With Me’ / ‘You're Looking Fine’ 45?
CM: When Larry and Dave came into Gonn, we were anxious to cut another record with them, so again, we wrote a song specifically to be recorded, just one night in Rex's basement. He played a couple of chord things and we went back and forth. I wrote lyrics and we built it in a few minutes. ‘You're Looking Fine’ was our cover of The Kinks, and our tradition was that Gerry sang one side and I sang the other. We were broke of course, so our resident 20-year old stock broker, Larry, put up the money. We pressed a whopping 300 copies. There you go.
60s: Why wasn't the 45 ever released at the time?
CM: Ah, you have it wrong! It was released. ‘Doin' Me In’ was the one that wasn't released. It was the actual follow-up to ‘Blackout’, recorded in the same studio - the works. But our friends heard the acetate of it and my screaming made everybody look at us sideways. We couldn't afford a flop, so we attempted to tame it down, but then we didn't like it, and just shelved it. We did it live but didn't release it until years later. I sure wish we had! It would be one of the most collectible garage 45s on earth if it had come out in 1967.
60s: Where did Gonn record? What do you remember about the recording session(s)?
CM: ‘Blackout’ and ‘Doin' Me In’ and a lot of other cover songs were recorded at Bob Meffiord's Electronics and Engineering in Burlington. He had a back room set up as a 'studio.' It was just an empty storeroom, with a mono tape deck that also provided the echo by feeding the signal back onto the deck through the mixing board - standard stuff in the Stone Age. He used, literally, two microphones to record everything we did there. One pointed more or less toward me and the drummer and the other pointed more or less in the other direction catching the rest, and everything went down live - no headphones, no monitor, at nearly full teen center volume, no dubbing, no actual vocal mikes. Just two.
‘Don't Need Your Lovin,’ ‘You Can't Judge A Book,’ ‘Hey Joe’ and several others were done mono live in Freddie Tieken's basement studio in Quincy. ‘Come With Me’ was recorded there too, and I still get a laugh remembering Fred trying to get Rex to play answering guitar licks to the ‘You're Looking Fine’ chorus vocal and Rex getting totally 16-year old petulant over it. God…I wish I had that on film. I hear and see it every time I hear the recording - Rex just farcing it off and playing his least effective bits. “How dare he tell me what to do?” I love it. Ha! It was totally garage to the bone.
The reunion album Gonn With The Wind was recorded in Springfield, Missouri, at a studio owned by a group called The Skeletons, who are famous on their own as an alternative, cult band of the ‘80s and ‘90s. We cut the majority of it over two days there and then took the masters and added a couple of songs at Private Studios in Champaign, Illinois. I finished it there, doing some vocal tracks and guitar bits on ‘The Wind’ etc. We mixed it all mono as it should be.
I think Fred must have used maybe six mikes on ‘Come With Me’, which was astonishing after doing so much at Mefford's with two. So it was only 30 years later that Gonn actually used a full blown recording set-up, and then mixed it mono anyway.
60s: How prolific of a songwriter were you in Gonn?
CM: Just beginning in earnest. Actually I had already written quite a few songs before Gonn. A Keokuk band called The Outcasts had already done Ventures-style instrumental versions of two of my songs, which I of course loved immensely. One was a song called ‘I've Lost My Little Girl’ which was a title I got out of an early article on The Beatles where Paul mentioned his first song title. I stole it, but just the title of course. Nobody ever heard his. Or mine for that matter, outside of Keokuk and Outcasts gigs. It was their bass player, Roger Dougherty, who later gave me my grand total of three bass lessons while I was a Pagan. I had previously written a couple of little songs that my Aunt Sylvia, who played organ in steak houses and private parties, wrote out on sheet music for me and I sent off to Bobby Darin at TM Music in Hollywood. I was 15. I got back a very nice letter saying that these songs weren't exactly what they were looking for just then but to feel free to send them more any time! This was really big stuff to me, Darin's letterhead with the Capitol Records tower on it. Wow. But then here came The Beatles and I got all wrapped up in trying to be a disc jockey or a band manager - and then be in a band myself - and I never sent them any more songs. To my great regret I lost the letter many years ago. In Gonn Rex and I sort of wrote for purpose, and accumulated tons of great titles, the most undying being ‘The Wind’ so we could do an album called Gonn With The Wind which by golly in fact we did, 30 years later. Gonn and The Pagans both did a song I wrote prior to the bands called ‘A Woman A Lover A Friend’ and maybe some others. It’s hard to recall titles.
60s: Do any (other) '60's Gonn recordings exist? Are there any vintage live recordings, or unreleased tracks that weren't included on the Gonn CD that you reissued on your own label?
CM: Not as far as we know. If there is a live tape it has never surfaced and I personally never made one happen. It would be, as the commercials say, ‘priceless’. There are a lot of 1997 European tour live recordings however - never mixed, unreleased, and a video/digital recording of the 2004 Burlington Auditorium reunion concert, which I have yet to even see.
60s: Do you recall any of the local TV appearances the band made? What were some of the show names?
CM: Well, we were on Des Moines TV for the State Fair, and I think this was during Brent's ‘longest - endless - day’ with his jeans. I think we did ‘Hey Joe’ and maybe a Byrds song? I can't recall. We were on with a band called Captain Beefheart and The Shipwrecks who told us we were “so west coast man, like wow” which we took to heart of course. “Well yes…we are aren't we just!” Ha! And we were on Kirksville Channel 3 in 1967 doing ‘The Nazz Are Blue’ and two or three others. We were loud as hell and the studio guys were freaking out completely. We might as well have been Blue Cheer. They just had no idea how to handle us. And we really quite didn't give a damn, my dear.
60s: What year and why did the band break up in the '60's?
CM: Gonn as a band carried on until 1969. Rex and Larry left in 1968, spring I think. We just had disagreements over just about everything and nothing specific. It was just time for everybody to go off on his own tangent. Fortunately it was like your first girlfriend and we never lost that affection, regardless. Gerry, Dave and I had several line-ups afterward, all of which were very good and kept the brand alive and well. Alfred Boyer who played 12-string with us is now a multi-millionaire. Dana Georges who played guitar overdosed. At one point we had a kid named Jerry Ison on lead that was very good, a little weird, but dumped us for his girlfriend. I met up with her a couple of years ago; they got married and divorced naturally. She still looks mighty good. But none are worth leaving the band. Oh the things we learn in the passage of time.
Then Slink Rand and Jerry Heath, lead and rhythm, great band and a lotta fun. Slink dumped us to join Freddie Tieken and The Rockers. We had Jules Pattenaude for a stretch. He played bass for Brillo for a while and is on their single, ‘Some Place To Hide.’ He played guitar in a band with Slink called Bonaparte Citric Store for a while, and played lead with Gonn briefly. He was also the guy who got my Nazi flag. So there were numerous versions of Gonn in a very, very short time. Then Gabel formed Mother Hooker's Blues Band with Dave. I joined up and stole Dave. Gabe likes to rub that in. And then the musical chairs really went crazy. It ended up with me in Freddie Tieken and The Rockers, with Slink, which morphed into a heavy psych/blues band called Freddie Tieken's American Music Band, and then Gabel joined and at that point it became Ilmo Smokehouse with one LP on Roulette.
We have swapped emails for years trying to get the sequence of all this straight, but good luck on that!
The “real” Gonn attempted one short reunion in late 1969 that was a bust, and it wasn't until 1990 that we pulled it back together. Then it was another six years before the actual ongoing second lifetime began. And yet, I think all of us always thru the years considered the real Gonn members to have been Rex, Brent, Gerry, Craig, Gary, Dave and Larry.
I recall calling everybody up in 1984 from Los Angeles, to tell them I was out there with Greg Shaw at Bomp Records to do a Gonn album of all those ‘60’s recordings, which I had kept like icons safe and sound all that time. They all thought I was nuts, I think, or pulling their leg. It's 23 years later and it has only gotten more interesting and more a part of garage band lore, with things like the Nuggets box where we share a disc with ‘Wooly Bully’ and ‘Louie Louie and ‘Steppin' Out’ and The Chocolate Watchband, with The Seeds, Music Machine, Leaves - all of that incredible stuff and us! And complete with an induction into the Iowa Rock ‘N Roll Hall Of Fame and an appearance live at the national Rock ‘N Roll Hall Of Fame in 2005. Who would ever have thought? It's just all too frikkin' cool, that's all.
60s: How do you best summarize your experiences with Gonn?
CM: The best of times, the worst of times, but by God the very best of times ever, far beyond our teenage dreams and schemes. And I'd like to do it all again, knowing what we know now, of course. See you on the Hot 100.
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