John Coggeshall lived an interesting life while a member of a ‘60s rock band. As leader and keyboardist for Connecticut’s Pentagons—the group that recorded his classic original ‘About The Girl I Love’—his song ‘She Left Me’ garnered even more attention, and led to neighboring band The Breakers’ receiving a recording contract. The Pentagons, however, were still very much in demand in the New London area, and although none were released, had several other recordings in the can. Coggeshall in fact is still recording, and his blues CD/album should be available sometime this summer.
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| The Pentagons: Steve Morse, Gary Lamperelli, Dave Lemieux, unknown Pentagon member and John Coggeshall on right. The fifth guy was not a member for long. |
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| John Coggeshall |
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An Interview With John Coggeshall
60sgaragebands.com (60s): How did you first get interested in music?
John Coggeshall (JC): I’m told my dad was tone deaf, but my mom sang in the church choir and actually cut a few 78s in her heyday. She was very good. My guess is, because as a young lad I exhibited manic, unfocused energy that drove everybody nuts, she decided I should focus on music. So, at age seven or so, she gave me a choice of instruments to learn. I wanted to play sax but, at my age, you had to start with a clarinet which, unlike the sax, was a sissy instrument (licorice stick my butt). That didn’t work out. So she forced me into classical piano lessons. I hated them! Sitting there learning scales…Leila Fletcher…Czerny studies…aaarrrgghhhh! I was not interested in music! Ah, but then The Beatles hit, followed by even more influential British bands with genuine keyboard players. Hey! I knew how to play that instrument! And chording along with top ten songs was much easier, more fun and offered better instantaneous gratification than playing ‘Flight of the Bumblebee.’ So I became more than interested. I became hooked.
60s: Was The Pentagons your first band?
JC: The idea of a rock band formed between me and my best bud at the time, Stephen Jakubielski (we shared a love of Famous Monsters of Filmland, Aurora monster models and Marvel comic books). Stephen would be lead singer and maraca player (he had not lived under the dictatorial tutelage of my mother’s piano playing obsession, so had no musical training) while I would play a portable organ like Mike Smith, Rod Argent, and that guy in Manfred Mann. Montville High School offered few musicians of any kind (unless we wanted a tuba or piccolo player) but I found Steve Morse, an honor student and a serious/excellent guitar player (ironically stuck with a loathsome Kent guitar) and Dave Lemieux, a natural-born drummer (on Pro Tempo, or Tempo Pro, drums). We put Dave on a picnic table. For $25, my grandfather bought me an air-run organ that produced sound after holding down the keys for awhile. Steve Morse had a pretty good Ampeg Jet 12” amp, and Dave hauled out an old Webcor reel-to-reel deck, so we used the deck’s two remote speakers and a tape recorder mike taped to my air-run organ to sound terrible with. Me, Him and The Other Guys was our first name. That was 1965. But we were the nucleus of The Pentagons. Three of us (John, Steve Morse and Dave) stayed together throughout high school. What happened to Stephen Jakubielski, my best friend?
I really don’t remember how Gary, the sax player, got into the band. Was he sucking around for the gig, or was he recruited? In late 1965 he was probably recruited, due to my fixation on The Dave Clark Five. He was asked to join because The DC5 had that guy who played sax with a mouthpiece full of spit, Denis Somebody-Or-Other (damn I’m gettin’ old, Payton?). Unfortunately, Gary only owned a crappy ol’ C-Melody sax, the most hated wind instrument ever. But, as luck would have it, one practice session I accidently kicked it down some stairs and, since C-Melody saxophones were no longer made, he had to get a nice new tenor like DC5 Denis. It all worked out in the end. So the five Pentagons (yes, it’s a five sided thing) were fully formed in 1965. But (and, admittedly, this is hotly disputed) Gary, Dave and Steve Morse, who played real instruments, thought Stephen Jakubielski, my best friend and the band co-founder, was not worthy of getting a fifth of our at-that-time-non-existent-giant-payday-bonanzas we were sure to get as rock stars someday, so they ganged up on me and forced me to kick Stephen out. Yes, forced! I’ll never forgive them. So I had to take over the lead singing. And what do I say to the skeptics who point out that my idol was Mike Smith, the undisputed lead singer and keyboardist of The Dave Clark Five? A mere coincidence, I reply. We would do A-sides, B-sides, album cuts of The DC5. We had really good, reliable three-part harmony with my lead, Gary below and Steve above.
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| Me Him & The Other Guys |
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60s: How would you best describe the band’s sound?
JC: Our sound. In 1965 my gramps sprung for a nice new Doric organ and decent-sized Ampeg amp for $550 (in today’s dollars, figure about three grand—that’s being a great granddad). No bass guitar players were in Montville, so I played all the bass on the Doric, through a separate bass amp. Steve got a nice semi-hollow Guild guitar. He was influenced by Hendrix (he would play solos with his teeth, on occasion). Dave came from old school Sandy Nelson albums, Gary seemed more interested in drumming than brass music, but liked Blood Sweat & Tears and Chicago, and I was “Montville Mike Smith” but with the left bass hand of Ray Manzarek, The Doors’ bassline-playing keyboardist. What do all those influences sound like together? A reasonably OK sixties high school garage rock band, I guess.
60s: What was the Montville rock scene like during the ‘60s?
JC: There wasn’t any Montville rock and roll scene in the sixties, besides us. There isn’t any Montville rock-and-roll scene in the two thousands, that I’m aware of. There has never been any rock and roll scene in Montville. I found the only non-marching-band musicians in Montville High School between 1965 and 1969. There was no one else. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Why? Obviously, no one could ever do it better than The Pentagons, so no one’s even tried (OK, just kidding—it’s an unexplained, vast wasteland of nonexistent rock talent, who knows why?) With the new Indian casino openings you’d think it would be better, maybe it is, I haven’t lived there in over 40 years. Nothing rock-oriented has ever emerged from that town bigger than the tiny Pentagons.
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Now, next door New London is a different story: The Breakers rode a song I wrote for them (‘She Left Me’) all the way to a New York City battle of the bands that landed them a new name, The New York Thruway, and an MGM recording contract; Davy Jones and The Dolphins (not The Monkees' Davy Jones, but New London Davy Jones) regularly played the famous Lamperelli’s Seven Brothers Restaurant on New London’s infamous Bank Street, and Davy eventually opened a recording studio (East Coast Sound Studio) on Bank Street. Maybe even Norwich produced something; The Barn A-Go-Go outside New London had the great house band The Windjammers. But not Montville/Uncasville.
60s: Why didn't The Pentagons record 'She Left Me'?
JC: The Pentagons recorded first, in Stafford Springs, on my grandpa’s dime. We released 'About The Girl I Love' / 'Summer's Over' all over Montville High School. About the time of that release, Wayne Manca, the drummer of the New London-based Breakers, and his parents moved to Montville, so Wayne began attending Montville High. The Breakers were a much more professional outfit than The Pentagons. Heck, their bass player’s mom and dad put the group smack dab in the middle of their living room and let them practice nonstop. They had a Hammond C3 with Ritchie G. playing it, and he was good. Tony Brennan was the guitarist with this high, high 'More-Today-Than-Yesterday' tenor voice. They entered area battle of the bands and won some. One of the prizes they won was recording time in the newly opened Davy Jones and The Dolphins studio, East Coast Sound, on Bank Street in New London. Nobody in The Breakers wrote songs, and Wayne had a copy of The Pentagon’s record, so they asked me. I had written 'She Left Me' in a high key (a song about the ups and down between me and my high school sweetheart/future first wife) and I thought it was perfect for Tony’s voice. The back side, 'An Always Time' is one of the worst pieces of crap I ever wrote. It’s a pale, tepid, anorexic rip-off of 'It's Not Unusual' by Tom Jones. Why didn’t I give them one of my better ones? Oh...I know why. I was saving all the good stuff for my band, The Pentagons.
'She Left Me' had legs, as they say. As I've mentioned, The Breakers rode that song through a series of band battles to a finale at the Cheetah Club in New York City, circa 1969 (they let me come as a roadie for them, a slight I shall never forget). In the end, The Breakers came in second, but met some connected folks who got them an MGM contract and changed their name to The New York Thruway (apparently to conjure images of potholed decay). They released a bubblegum 45, 'Jack B. Nimble' (yes, based on the nursery rhyme) backed with 'Daphne,' neither written by me. They should have stuck with 'She Left Me.'
60s: Where did The Pentagons typically play?
JC: The Pentagons played Montville High School dances, funky Norwich clubs, The Filipino-American Club on Truman Street in New London, where passers-by would throw lit firecrackers through open windows onto the dance floor while folks scattered for cover. We were employed regularly at the YWCA in New London and the submarine base EM Club in Groton. Our very first paying gig was at an insane asylum, the Norwich State Hospital, where inmates threw hotdogs at us in appreciation, and we made $2.50 per man (part of that big payday bonanza described earlier). We played teen club The Norwich Rooftop (where a fan caught Steve in the john and punched him out in appreciation), other area high school dances, The Oakdale Fire Station for several New Year’s Eve gigs, the Miss Norwich Pageant (a preliminary to the Miss America Pageant, but no contestants ever gave us the time of day ‘cause we were dweebs).
We “toured” (a misnomer, we played Friday and Saturday nights and used our parents’ cars so we always had to come home, except one time, which I’ll get to eventually) as far as the farthest reaches of Rhode Island. The YWCA had band battles, we always came in third to The Mustangs (they did a great ‘Farmer John’) and The Shadows (classier suits and choreography).
60s: Did The Pentagons have a manager?
JC: I was the manager of the group from inception to conclusion. We had an “agent” for awhile, a rather sore spot that eventually embroiled me and Steve in a fist fight at Montville High one morning before class (many who saw it claim I won, but Steve was an honor student and I was a farm boy, so it’s to be expected).
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60s: What were the circumstances leading to the band’s opportunity to record?
JC: Our financial angel throughout the four-year Pentagon saga was my grandfather and the man I’m named after, John A. Coggeshall. He loved his grandson. He let us use his Chevy impala with the 283 cubic for gigs; he bought me that awful wheezy air-run organ so the group was at least free from my mom’s living room piano, and then he bought me the Doric organ (similar to, but not as sexy as, a Farf or the coveted Vox Continental), some Traynor column speakers and Bogen PA stuff and Electro voice 664 mikes so we could play on a professional level, and he’d always listen to my dreams of rock stardom. I first convinced him to spring for studio time in New Haven (once again, nothing in recording options in Montville) and we cut an acetate of two of my songs, ‘The Walk’ and ‘Summer’s Over,’ singing and playing at the same time, in early 1966. Our dreams were bigger than that.
So I convinced him to spring for studio time in a recommended studio in Stafford Springs/Somers, Connecticut. We loaded everything in two cars and ended up in this huge abandoned movie theatre with Mr. Soyka’s recording equipment parked near the projection booth, in a recording studio he called Audio Dynamics (only recently did I discover Mr. Soyka is a revered legend in polka circles, and that he recorded much polka music in that studio). It was truly neat overdubbing for the first time, doing the instruments first and then the vocals like real artists. We found some bell-chime-sounding keyboard in the back of the theatre and added that to the ‘Summer’s Over’ instrumental break (it still sounds like a good addition today). Gramps sprang for either five hundred or a thousand copies of ‘About The Girl I Love’ b/w ‘Summer’s Over.’ The pressings were rough. “Audyn Music” is listed on the label but I could never find that entity. We sold the records at gigs and sent our girlfriends, every day with their friends, into the local Norwich record store to request it, so Gaffney’s in downtown Norwich carried it for a time. We got the Norwich radio station (WICH) to play it. The record went vinyl, and no more.
60s: You are credited as producer/arranger on the record, and you also wrote both songs…
JC: I have always written songs. It has been my passion and avocation since I was 15, and continues today. My sole occupation, for the majority of my adult years, was as a nightclub musician in the Norfolk/Virginia Beach, Virginia area, performing as “John Cog, The Amazing One-Man Band.” I became an attorney about 15 years ago and, although that profession is quite demanding, I still have a home recording studio, with a blues album near completion and a release date scheduled for summer 2010.
My biggest song hit so far occurred back in late 2005 when Stephen Colbert, on Comedy Central’s Colbert Report, prominently featured (lyrics across the bottom of the TV screen with bouncing ball above) my campaign jingle for Gail Parker, U.S. Senate candidate. He and the audience sang along with it twice, and you can still pull it up (www.colbertnation.com, click on Video Clips, then, in Search-for-Videos box, enter 'Vote For Gail Jingle) and view it. It was really cool.
60s: Are there any other Pentagons recordings? Are there unreleased songs, or live tracks?
JC: Other reasonably available Pentagon tracks, live and otherwise, exist: pretty good cover versions of ‘She’s Not There,’ ‘Sweet Wine’ by Cream and a ‘Mercy, Mercy’ sax instrumental, a horribly slow version of ‘Cherish,’ and a hilarious work track of another composition of mine, ‘Sad Day,’ where I recorded the basic track alone, then hung around while Steve and Gary attempted to add harmonies.
60s: Did The Pentagons make any TV appearances?
JC: There were no TV appearances.
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| The Pentagons: Gary Lamperelli, Dave Lemieux, Steve Morse and John Coggeshall |
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I have no TV clips or film of the group (that might be a good thing). YouTube currently features two recordings of the group with two photos ('About The Girl I Love' and 'Summer's Over') created by a very committed Pentagons fan in France.
60s: When and why did The Pentagons break up?
JC: The band “The Pentagons” didn’t actually break up; we more-or-less transformed into another chameleon-like entity. I’ll explain. Our last gig (John, singer/keyboard; Steve, guitar; Dave, drums; and Gary, sax) as “The Pentagons” was in the summer after our senior year at Montville High (1969) for Dave’s boss at a car dealership he worked at (or somebody like that, maybe the boss’s daughter’s birthday party, bar mitzvah, coming out, cotillion...whatever). We kinda knew it was the end. Steve and Gary and I were going off to college (me to North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and Steve and Gary to University of Connecticut), and Dave was headed for air conditioning school. Was that it? No. After our first year in college, our parents made us get real jobs during summer 1970. I mean, work. Like 8-hours-a-day, manual labor laced boots type stuff (except Steve, who apparently taught guitar in some air conditioned suite). But I had to work at the thermos factory! On swingshift. And to get that gig, I had to lie and say I was quitting college because I wanted a career, yeah, at the thermos factory. Then, about halfway through that summer, their big vat of molten glass (75 tons) that was used to make the inside of your thermos, sprung a leak and oozed out and hardened all over the machinery, so we had to take the entire factory apart. Good times. Hey, I was a star! I usta be somebody. Now this. So, during Christmas break of sophomore year I met Gary, who was reduced to sweeping floors in his dad’s nightclub, the famous Lamperelli's Seven Brothers on infamous Bank Street. We hatched an idea: For the next three college summers, before being grownups became inevitable, we would play at Seven Brothers, every week, and re-name the band every week so it looked like, in the newspaper ads, the club was presenting exotic rock bands from the Earth’s four corners for your entertainment pleasure. It was foolproof. The regulars were regulars and would show up anyway, and it gave the club a little pizzazz in the eyes of the general public: "Burnt Toast from Miami"—"Fistful of Worms from Denver". And none of the seven brothers ever cared what we called ourselves, so admittedly the names soon "pushed the envelope" a little: "Running Sores from Boston," "Prep H from Detroit," "Pimps and Whores from Philly"—and my poster artwork for the club entrance deteriorated a little each summer (a piece of cardboard with a slice of real burnt toast nailed to it) but hey, we were stars again. How well did it work? People would actually come up to us during the night and say, "Hey, when is Burnt Toast coming back? We liked them better than you guys." One other thing: in order to maximize our weekly take home pay, Gary decided to end his sax playing days and finally come out of the closet as a drummer (which I knew he always wanted to do), so Steve and Gary forced me to never tell Dave we were back together again. Yes, forced! OK, it was a mutual decision. And we had heard Dave was already hooked up with a country band (in Connecticut, the heartland of country music). So our final gig occurred in 1973, at Lamperelli’s Seven Brothers Restaurant in New London, Connecticut, on infamous Bank Street, sharing the stage with Bobbi and Janice, the two hot go-go dancers, and the Seven Brothers Orchestra. I went on to a professional rock band in New York City, Cog, for awhile, turned it into a successful one-man nightclub act for a couple of decades, and then became an attorney in Virginia. Gary went to Florida and prospered in sales (we keep in touch), and at this time I do not know the life paths trod by Steve and Dave.
60s: How do you best summarize your experiences with The Pentagons?
JC: I will summer-ize our most memorable gig: It occurred during the high school summer of either our junior or senior year. I had found us an "agent": an ambitious young man capable of out-bargaining the Pawn Stars. I don’t think Steve, Dave or Gary ever warmed to him but, hey, I was doing everything: I was lead singer so I had to learn all the words to all the songs. I was the keyboard player, played all the bass guitar parts, set up all the rehearsals, booked all the gigs. I was in drama club and still had to keep some semblance of grades up, and I was in the process of stealing the prettiest girl in Montville High from her greaser boyfriend. It was a load to bear. So I got this guy who claimed he’d get us some gigs (for a percentage, of course). Rhode Island’s Misquamicut Beach was the hot spot during the summer back then. The J. Geils Band got its start there. Killer clubs up and down this long strip of beach road that ran parallel to the surf. Our agent called, "John, I got The Pentagons booked for the whole summer at ‘The Blue Sands’ on the strip!" Oh, man. Things had been slow up to that point that summer, and we had all just gotten jobs at Connecticut Cabinet (essentially defacing wooden stereo cabinets with air guns) so this gig was big news! We had just purchased really neat, light blue Edwardian long coats for each band member, and we were itching to be seen. So I quit that Cabinet position because this was our big break. The gig entailed playing four hours each night, six nights a week, plus a couple of sets during each day (the club was right on the beach) to bring bathers in for drinks and snacks. Like a Frankie Avalon and Annette movie, but updated to British Mod! Wow! We were primed! We opened that Monday, packed house! Tuesday afternoon, sunbathing, swimming, playing a set or two, back to the water (a few drinks, OK, OK, I know, underage, it was different back then). Tuesday night, packed house! But then Wednesday afternoon hit, and it hit hard--like a guy named Guido trying to collect the vigorish. It turns out that nonstop sunbathing, drinking, swimming and singing is not good for the vocal chords. We began sounding like Scatman Crothers. And it hurt to even talk! But we didn’t care! We played more instrumentals and got boxes of Park Davis Throat Discs. Wednesday night, packed house! Another surprise: those damn Edwardian coats must have been made of crepe paper and polyester – they were god awful hot! But we didn’t care! A slight miscalculation on my part: we lived in Eastern Connecticut, we were playing all day and all night in Rhode Island, and I had forgotten to take into consideration overnight accommodations. We didn’t care! We’d sleep in our cars on side streets in Warwick, about the halfway point. Brilliant! Second night: tap tap tap on the window. Police: "Move along, boys." No sleep, two-state commute, sing all day, sing all night, daylight come and me wan’ go home. Candidly, it was starting to wear on us. So we’re sitting in that summer heat at a snack bar outside the club, staring into space, popping throat discs and sucking ice. I don’t remember who was with me; at this point we were dropping like flies all over the beach. Our "agent" had decided that he was going to double his money by booking another band in a dumpy looking, one-story/street entrance club across the street. He had set up a chintzy speaker system at the door, and was yelling, at the top of his lungs, "Orange Purple Marmalade! Come in for Orange Purple Marmalade!" as folks walked by registering disinterest and pity. Suddenly, from down the long beach strip, a helmeted motorcyclist appears, straight out of Mad Max casting. Gunning that unmuffled engine, he sped like a demon towards the scene. "Orange Purple Marmalade! Right here folks. Orange Purple Marmalade!" In a split second, the cyclist apparently warmed to the idea of listening to Orange Purple Marmalade and, without signaling, without any warning of any kind and without even slowing down, he jerked his cycle toward the club entrance and just sped through the door--over the chintzy speaker system, over our "agent" and apparently into the back wall of the building! We just sat there, sucking our ice. Friday night, packed house! Saturday night, packed house! But then, Dickey’s, another club next door, wises up. The following week, that club books a Hammond B3-based horn band--with sexy chick back-up singers. Monday night, tumbleweeds and newspapers are blowing across The Blue Sands’ dance floor. We discover our club is so big it has an echo. We’re fired. Good thing, too; we wouldn’t have lasted the week. I would have chosen that horn band over teenagers sweating in blue long coats, gargling lyrics and/or playing the same instrumentals over and over again any day of the week. No day gig, no night gig, down by the seaside, siftin’ sand. I wouldn’t trade those days for a rare CD of Orange Purple Marmalade.
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| Article detailing The Breakers' success with Coggeshall's 'She Left Me' |
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| Pentagons and Related Recordings |
| My Garage Rock Band '65-'73 |
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© By John Coggeshall
Four high school lads with Ampeg Jet,
Kent guitar, Pro Tempo set,
Saxophone (C Melody),
Piano and good harmony.
Along came neighbors, friends (fans?)
Claiming they could play in bands,
Auditioned all, the pros and cons,
But only four were Pentagons.
John's upstairs porch, stopping cars,
Playing in Dave's hot garage.
In dusty basements, freezing attics,
Parents very sympathetic.
Drummer Dave: non-stop, hell-bent,
'Wipe Out' from Steve's screaming Kent,
John's wheezing air-run organ drones
To Saxman Gary's honking tones.
Two-bucks-a-man at Norwich State,
Five-bucks-a-man at Avery Point.
With hot dogs thrown at every man
By crazed inmates who "loved" the band.
Then our "Big Break": USO,
We started bad and started slow,
Picked up speed and filled the stands,
But never won in Battling Bands.
Equipment came, equipment went,
New Doric organ, goodbye Kent.
Columns, amps, everywhere,
So long, 'C Melody' down the stairs.
New tenor sax and lots of drums,
Refurbished barn to practice from.
Singin, 'Surfin' Bird' 'til dawn,
Police complaints can't shut us down.
Halloween dances at the 'Y',
Steve, 'The Hippie', gettin' high,
"Bad Girl" Gary's padded chest
,John, "The Villain", Dave: well-dressed.
From the "Y" to EM's Club,
A place we grew to know and love.
The money? Good. We couldn't lose,
"Boobs the Dancer," and the booze.
Writing songs, all surefire hits,
"About The Girl I Love" and when it's
John's rich grandpa pulling strings,
A record's cut in Stafford Springs.
We play New London's meaner nights,
The "backdoor" clubs, the dance floor fights,
Rowdy Norwich Rooftop fans,
Who punch Steve out whilst in the can.
That high school gym was so fantastic,
Tossing chairs and making baskets,
Trashcans on the roof by Dave,
Who claimed we were "The Purple Sage",
And after we had done all that,
How come they never asked us back?
The "Sands" Rhode Island club was fame,
We blew our voices—no one came.
We slept in cars ‘til we got paid,
And found an "agent". Who got played?
On New Year's Eve at Oakdale Fire,
Commissions always getting higher,
The "agent" blows and who gets pissed?
Steve and John exchanging fists.
Playing in and out of key,
Through four years of infamy.
Then one last gig, we play that cool,
As Dave departs for AC school.
Three off to college, summer chores:
Gary sweeping nightclub floors,
Steve, just teaching guitar class
While John smashed thermos factory glass.
‘Til realizing we still had skills,
We dusted off Steve's vintage Guild,
And hatched a scheme so slick and sleek:
We changed the band name every week
And played one club for three full summers:
Bank Street's famous Seven Brothers.
"Burnt Toast from Vegas", "Running Sores",
"Phart from Philly", "Pimps & Whores",
Pretending we were new, and hot,
Gary, Steve and John were not
Just college guys with Ampeg Jet,
Guild guitar, new Ludwig set,
Now Gary's gone from sax to drum,
And John's B3? Obtained "on loan",
Playin' songs that stomp and shout,
The sounds of "Toast" a-burnin' out,
And everyone was finely pleased
With us, and those old melodies.
'Twas not too bad, but, then again,
Not half of what it might have been.
In seven-three, we left that stage,
And yes, we turned the page.
© by John "Cog" Coggeshall: lead singer and keyboardist for The Pentagons, Burnt Toast, The Running Sores, Fistful of Worms, Phart, Pimps & Whores, Prep H. From Detroit, etc.
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© 2010 By John Coggeshall and 60sgaragebands.com
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