I’m trying to live in the past, but at pushing 60 years old, it’s really fun to think back on those years and remember what a totally unique period it was and that even 40 years later there is still such an interest. I hadn’t thought much about it until recently until I happened upon the psychedelic chatroom online and saw some conversations about Hamilton Streetcar. From there I was able to hook up with John Burge (Ian), our keyboard player, and with Jay Alan, our bass player. I played lead guitar for the group since its inception until the end with only a brief period in ’68 when Mike Georgiades took over.
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| Ralph Plummer (standing in forefront), Greg Hart (laying down on the tree), Tom Fannon (with dark hair and sweater), John Burge (next with blonde hair and striped sweater) and Jay Alan (at top). |
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Tom Fannon Recalls Hamilton Streetcar
Michael was in a group called Gross National Product. They played with us in a couple of concerts…I think one being with The Doors in Las Vegas in the summer of ’67. I had gotten married earlier in the year and was going to have a child. I figured I should be starting a career with a kid on the way so I felt the “adult” thing to do was shift into that mode. So Michael took over for a while. Dates are a little fuzzy but I think I left the band around December ’67. For whatever reason, the band asked me to rejoin the band around May of ’68.
I started playing guitar in 1963 when I was a sophomore in high school. I took lessons at a music store in Glendale, California for a time but was losing interest because I wasn’t much interested in learning all the fundamentals. I wanted to learn some songs. (An aside: the drum teacher at the store was Spenser Dryden who later joined Jefferson Airplane). Things changed when my older cousin Rick came to stay with my family to go to college in Glendale. He had been playing guitar for years and he showed me how to play. We started an instrumental band playing Ventures, Wailers and the surf music that was popular at the time. That was the very start of the band that would later become Hamilton Streetcar.
Rick moved away eventually Bart Conway (original bass player) and I kept moving forward with several other players. It was my first band and the first name was The Regents. We changed the name to The Chosen Few in 1965 after John Burge (keyboards) and Barry McGuire (drums) had joined. I was singing lead in the several songs that weren’t instrumentals but by that time, the surf music craze was done and The Beatles, Stones, etc. were the way to go. We put an ad in our local newspaper for a lead singer (we were naïve) thinking we might find a good frontman that way. Ralph Plummer answered the ad, auditioned and the band was essentially born at that point. He bought original songs to the group as well as the ability to sing other bands’ songs sounding like the original singers but with his own uniqueness mixed in.
One of the local bands we like was The Seeds. We did a couple of gigs with them and had been seeing them at a local Hollywood club called Bido Litos (that had also showcased Love and early Iron Butterfly). We covered a lot of their songs, one of which was called ‘Rollin’ Machine’. We thought it was a cool name and figured it was more appropriate for us considering the times. We kept that name for a while but changed it in 1966 to Hamilton Streetcar after meeting our future manager Forrest Hamilton (son of jazz drummer great, Chico Hamilton). We toyed with Hamilton Omnibus briefly but decided on Streetcar because of the emerging San Francisco scene. So after rambling on, I guess I formed the band originally in 1963 in Glendale and we were together until late 1968.
We met Forrest while playing at a frat party at UCLA in the summer of 1966. He pretty much came up to us and said he liked us and wanted to be our manager. He told us about some connections through his dad and said he would promote us exclusively and get us a recording deal as well as concert appearances. We pretty much chalked him up as a drunken frat guy but a few weeks later he said the fraternity was putting on a concert at The Santa Monica Civic and he wanted us to play in it. We were told that the other acts were The Association and Chico Hamilton. That was that. He was totally active in promoting the band as well as setting up a production company to put on concerts. He also got us signed with William Morris Agency and got us our two record deals.
We actually set up our own production company called Pure Cane Productions to set up and book our own concerts. Forrest handled that. We would hire a headliner, book us as a second act and hire either a local band or some other band as an opening act (Gross National Product in Vegas with The Doors). We worked with Steppenwolf and The Doors primarily but we also did a festival in the Sacramento area that featured Jefferson Airplane, Spirit, Strawberry Alarm Clock and The Hour Glass (later to be The Allman Brothers). We did The Buffalo Springfield’s last concert (my personal favorite) in Long Beach. Our first real concert was in late 1966 when we did a concert featuring The Association and the Chico Hamilton Group. We worked with The Grassroots as well as others that I can’t quite recall.
We didn’t do a lot of club work in Hollywood but we did perform at Bido Litos, The Whisky once and a few other nondescript clubs of the time. We did appear as regulars at The Hullabaloo Club for most of 1967. I think the “Strip” was cool for a time around 1965 to 1967. Much after that it got pretty tacky. We also played at The Cheetah Club in Santa Monica quite a bit. It was a pretty large venue at the time.
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We recorded a single for Lee Hazelwood in spring of 1967 (‘Invisible People’ / ‘Flash’). These were Ralph’s songs that we had done for a year or so. Ralph wrote all our material. We probably had over 50 originals. Coincidentally, only one of our songs was on the album (‘Silverwings’) and it was undoubtedly the best tune on the album.
We originally did a demo record that Forrest paid for at a studio in Hollywood. We recorded about 15 songs—mostly one-take live recordings. It actually came out pretty good (Jay is in the process of remixing this vinyl onto a better format and plans on putting them on YouTube or MySpace). A couple of months later we went back in the studio and recorded what we hoped was going to be our first single called ‘Yesterday’. Forrest got us our contract with Lee with these demos. He liked ‘Invisible People’ so it became our single (‘Flash’ was the B-side). We did a couple of local TV music shows of the day to promote it. I remember one was (filmed on) the beach. I think it was called Groovy (how appropriate). A guy named Michael Blodgett, who was a minor local celebrity of the day, hosted it.
After I left, the band recorded another single for Lee (‘Your Own Come Down / ‘Confusion’). The first record enjoyed local success; the second didn’t do anything.
Our manager got us a contract with Dot Records to do an album. The producer was Richard Delvy (once a drummer for the surf band The Challengers). Unfortunately, he didn’t like the band much or our music. He didn’t think it was commercial enough. He basically fired Jay, Greg and I (keeping Ralph for vocals and John for his keyboards and arranging) and hired a bunch of studio musicians. He decided to do as “concept” album and collaborated with John Boylen (Appletree Theater). We had actually been playing John’s ‘Brother Speed’ in concert for a year or so. The album sounded nothing like the band and we all basically disavowed any affiliation to it. We were supposed to tour for it but we were so mad about the finished album we pretty much broke up the band. I think that is why the Internet claims us to be a studio band cause the album was done that way.
We were all really excited about the prospect of recording an album with a “real” record company like Dot that was going to promote us with a national tour and everything. Unfortunately, it all fell apart because of Richard Delvy. He had no appreciation of the group so he should have been replaced as our producer but I guess he had more “juice” than we did. He literally destroyed the group.
I continued to play until the late ‘70s, mostly in bar cover bands. That pretty much burned me out on bands. Today I am in the banking industry. I live in Colorado and I own a company that works with businesses processing their credit card transactions. I still play, of course, but not at all professionally. My business keeps me pretty busy and I have a ranch here with horses so they keep me pretty busy.
(My time in Hamilton Streetcar) was a time that, even though there were many frustrations, I would not have missed. It was the best time a young man could have had and I enjoy the renewed interest the ‘60’s are enjoying. What a trip!
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Hamilton Streetcar:
Ralph Plummer - Lead singer, frontman, writer of all of our 50 or so original songs
John Burge (Ian Hamilton) - Keyboardist and arranger
Tom Fannon - Guitarist and background vocals
Jay Alan - Bassist and background vocals (he replaced Bart Conway in early ’67)
Greg Hart - Drummer (he replaced a drummer named Danny Fantz who was with us for a very short time. Danny had replaced Barry in early ’67)
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