”Their songs remind me of my ex-wife. It should be a helluva night,”
says an onlooker waiting for Three Dog Night to take the stage.
Others at the Frontier Days Festival in Arlington Heights drift over from the Ferris wheel, the Water Devil or the Salt and Pepper Shaker, munching on barbecue sandwiches and nachos, carrying plastic bucketfuls of light beer. They settle into lawn chairs or onto blankets, which form a giant crazy quilt on the lawn in front of the stage.
In a pea-green trailer, Cory Wells and Danny Hutton, the two fortysomething singers who still perform as Three Dog Night, are about ready to go onstage. The lean, impossibly fresh-faced Hutton explains that he`ll be leaving immediately after the show in a mobile home with his wife and three children. Wells, who appears a bit more weary, noodles on an electric guitar, waiting for the signal to go on.
It`s one more night on the road for another once-major-league rock group that now makes its living on the summer fair circuit. In the Chicago area especially, the rapid growth of ”Tastes” and ”Fests,” of suburban fairs and park district-sponsored events, has created a new strata of oldies tours. Although the money doesn`t compare with the reunion tours of megagroups such as The Who or Rolling Stones, `60s rock alfresco has become an increasingly lucrative stepchild of the music business.
The ambience is still light years away from Top 10 hits and the Grammy Awards. As Hutton and Wells wait, the emcee out front announces that ”the waterfights for tomorrow have been canceled,” then introduces Miss Arlington Heights. A pretty young woman nervously gives her speech, and the band is introduced.
Four backing musicians file onto the stage to the rumbling of a dramatic bass note and kick immediately into ”Jambalaya.” Audience members-at least those in their 30s and 40s-begin nodding their heads, mouthing the words as Wells and Hutton begin singing.
As ”Never Been to Spain (But I Kinda Like the Music)” starts up, one section of the audience begins clapping in time. Inspired, a daddy turns his 2-year-old around, and they begin playing patty cake to the beat. Next to them, another listener is singing along, but he`s only a ”semifan,” he says. ”I didn`t even know they were going to be here tonight.”
Nine out of nine
Fan or not, any American growing up in the early `70s would be familiar with Three Dog Night because the trio was extremely popular. Between 1969 and 1974, the band scored nine gold singles. They`ll do every one of them tonight. ”Just an Old Fashioned Love Song,” ”Momma Told Me Not To Come,”
”One” and the others are delivered with note-perfect harmonies and reasonable conviction. The bass player and a guitarist take the harmony parts formerly sung by Chuck Negron, and no one in the crowd of some 10,000 seems to miss the third original Dog.
The band finishes its set with ”Celebrate,” waits the mandatory two minutes off stage, than tromps back on. Danny Hutton screams into the microphone, ”Jeremiah was a bullfrog!” and the audience is up for grabs. During the ”Joy to the World” encore, Hutton`s wife has gathered her three sons. As the band finishes with an instrumental coda, Hutton trots offstage and immediately heads for the RV, where his family is waiting with the engine idling. They`ll be driving through the night for tomorrow evening`s gig in Toledo.
For Wells, the evening is only half over. After stewing in the trailer for a few minutes (he is not pleased with the show`s sound mix), Wells emerges. For the next hour, he autographs Three Dog Night T-shirts, sold for $15 a pop, and schmoozes with fans.
Finally, Wells retires to his room at a nearby motel to talk about his annual summer gig. ”I spend half a year living out of a suitcase and the other half living like a human being,” Wells cracks in a raspy voice. ”It really starts rolling in May. Then we`re out all summer.
”Last night we were in Clinton, Iowa, playing Riverboat Days-or was it Ribfest?-or something. I don`t know, it all starts to blend in as one after a while. Anyway, my voice was completely gone-I always get some kind of allergy reaction in the Midwest-and I got as far as `One,` when I lost my voice entirely and had the audience sing it instead. Then we did a jam, and I made up some rap; it was inspirational, it was great, and the audience went crazy. Then you have nights like tonight.
Local nuances aside, tedium sets in after singing the same songs for so many years, summer after summer. ”If I didn`t love this business, I don`t think I could keep the freshness,” Wells admits. ”But how many times does a basketball player dribble a ball, and know right where he`s going to shoot-yet each game is different.”
According to Bob Kaltenbach, a talent booker based in Palatine, the oldies boom can be traced back to the Beach Boys. ”They started the whole thing, it seems to me, and they`re still the king of the circuit. They get about $100,000 a concert. Frankie Avalon is next, and most of the other bands get somewhere between $5,000 and $15,000 a show, depending on how hot they used to be.”
The Buckinghams had seven Top 20 hits in the late `60s, but lead singer Carl Giammarese says that financially the band is doing better than ever.
”Ask any `60s band, and they`ll tell you the same thing: We`re making more now than when we had songs on the charts, because we have more control. The managers aren`t taking everything.”
Giammarese attributes the rise of the festival circuit, especially in the Chicago area, to ChicagoFest, where he first performed with the reunited Buckinghams in 1980.
”When ChicagoFest collapsed, the idea of outdoor festivals with food had been implanted and spread to all these little communities. Seems like every year, more and more spring up.
”The response to that first reunion show was overwhelming. We broke all attendance records and were asked to do more dates. At first, I wasn`t sure if I wanted to continue it on a regular basis without the original lead singer
(Dennis Tufano). But I`ve found that what the people want to see and hear are the old songs, and at least a couple of the old guys.”
Classic rock rolls
Howard Silverman of Entertainment Talent Agency, the California company that books the Grassroots and Turtles, was one of the first promoters to spot the market for so-called classic rock, which he zealously distinguishes from oldies, or acts that predate the Beatles. In 1984, Silverman packaged a
”Happy Together” tour with the Association, the Turtles, Spanky and Our Gang, and Garry Pucket and the Union Gap. ”It was an experiment; we put them out for two weeks, and wound up booking them the rest of the summer,”
Silverman says.
”It doesn`t take a rocket scientist to figure out that there`s this giant block of Baby Boomers who want to hear what they grew up on.”
Silverman adds that, nostalgia aside, vintage rockers and summer festivals are a popular combination because the concertgoer generally gets in free. The artist`s fee is paid by a festival committee, park district, chamber of commerce, beer company, cigarette company-whoever runs the event.
”Festivals, fairs, tastes are safe money-you don`t have to worry about selling tickets to make your money,” he said. ”The way the economy is headed, the concert business is going toward the soft seat-free admission-situation, meaning people don`t want to plunk down $33 a ticket, plus parking and babysitters and everything else, when they can go see a band playing great songs with their families under the stars for free.”
Three choices
Silverman`s advice to musicians: ”You either become a superstar, or be ready to play festivals, or stay home.”
Besides the money, artists who have made enough to retire, such as Chubby Checker, are motivated by the sheer love of performing. Some bands were provoked to re-form by imposter bands put together by unscrupulous agents.
”My lawyers counted three bogus Steppenwolfs at one point crisscrossing the country,” recalls John Kay of the real Steppenwolf. ”So in 1980, I got tired of waiting for judges to decide the litigation, so I went back out to protect the name.
”I found myself playing this dive on the outskirts of Minnesota. Some young kid came up to me and said, `Hey, you`re not John Kay or you wouldn`t be playing a place like this.` ”
Not all living `60s performers are one the road, and some of those who are, are painfully past their prime.
Giammarese, who looks 15 years younger than his age, still sings in tune, and fronts one of the tightest of the revival bands, says he has shared the bill with some artists ”who really shouldn`t be doing it anymore, they`re really past their prime. It`s like the old-timers game in baseball. Once, they were the best of the best, and now they`re bent over and slow. But for the dedicated fan, the mystique is still there, just to see them trying.”
Not that the `60s groups are living exclusively in the past. ”There`s always that possibility of coming back with a new record,” Giammarese says.
”For all of us that are out there doing the oldies, the thing we dream about is having that hit record again.”
For Three Dog Night`s Cory Wells, there`s a more modest dream that sustains him through the festival season: an as-yet-unrealized dream of returning to his wife, children and home in Malibu and not going anywhere.
”I have a serious case of what we call road burn when I finish up a tour,” he says. ”The first thing my wife wants to do is go out to dinner. She doesn`t understand: I don`t want to get on anything that moves. I won`t even drive to the store.”
