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Paul Revere & the Raiders heroic Lead Singer/Songwriter/Producer – Mark Lindsay has impacted the music world in so a heap of unforgettable ways. Mark’s voice and persona with The Raiders made him a 60′s and 70′s icon and a mainstay on classic hits radio. Not only did he obtain legendary status with the band, he was the object for positive feeling of liking for the world’s school girl population. Mark Lindsay’s alluring smile, handsome profile, and mop-top dew with his long trademark ponytail (que) were on the front cover of each teen magazine around the globe. And forget regarding those redcoats from England that called themselves The Beatles, Mark Lindsay & the Raiders were True Blue Patriots for American Rock & Roll. Mark Lindsay will once again be singing those timeless Paul Revere & the Raiders megahits on The Happy Together Tour 2011. Headlining this year’s tour is -The Turtles featuring Flo & Eddie (“It Ain’t Me Babe” “Happy Together” “She’s My Girl”). Other legendary performers on the tour are -The Association (“Windy” “Cherish” “Along Comes Mary”), The Grassroots, (“Let’s Live for Today” “Midnight Confessions”) and The Buckinghams (“Kind of a Drag” “Don’t You Care” “Susan”). The tour will be stopping at Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater on Tuesday July 19th. All these GREAT performers on one stimulating bill, and remindful of the American Bandstand, Where the Action Is, Hullabaloo and Shindig TV show lineups of the 60′s. Paul Revere & the Raiders formulated hit after hit allround the 60′s and early 70′s. Memorable classics like “Kicks”, “Steppin’ Out”, “Hungry”, “Good Thing”, “Just Like Me” and “Indian Reservation.” Marl Lindsay is a Florida native now. And thanks to Jeff Albright from the Albright Entertainment Group, I was competent to speak with both Mark Lindsay and Mark Volman of The Turtles last week. The consultation with Professor Volman will be following this article. And now here’s my consultation with Mark Lindsay. Mark’s a Singer/Writer/Producer/Hitmaker & Legendary Frontman of Paul Revere & the Raiders. Hi Mark, thanks for spending a few moments with me today. How are you? “I’m great Ray. Where are you calling from?” I’m calling from gorgeous Bradenton, Florida. “Well hey; I’m sitting in Florida right now. We’re over near Jupiter and we’re actually living in Florida now. I’ve been married to Deborah for twenty years and in that twenty years we’ve lived in Idaho, Oregon, Arizona, California, Maui, Nashville, Memphis, upstate New York and Florida. So we’ve lived in all four corners of the country and Hawaii and I like Florida the best. Florida’s cool, where else may you get summer 365 days a year, altho it might get cold at night. I think we’re both lucky to be down here.” What was living in Hawaii like? “Except for the ocean breeze that blows finelooking much all the time in Maui, the weather is pretty much precisely the same. We lived there for eight years and lived regarding two miles down the road from George Harrison as a matter of fact. We had three acres right on a cliff overlooking the ocean. It was great except we had a full time gardener, amidst him and the two of us; we’d be out there three days a week just beating down the bushes. So it got crazy but it was fun.” Let’s talk with regards to The Happy Together 2011 tour. It not long ago celebrated it is 25th anniversary right? “I was on a great deal of of the primary ones and they put me back on the tour last year. We’ve got great reviews and we’re back again this year. I love it, it’s so much fun, you get to listen so galore outstanding songs and see all the guys, and it takes you back my friend, it takes you back. You’re gonna’ see a giant slice of the charts from the 60′s and 70′s and a lot of hits!” I was a top 40 radio deejay back in the late 70′s/early 80′s and then MTV and video wiped out the radio star. “Then the web wiped out the record. It’s all digital, it’s all downloads and regrettably there’s a lot of piracy. But the kids today, it’s a whole new generation, you got a kid that’s 12 or 13 years old and he just doesn’t grasp why he can’t hack in and download stuff because it’s there and so why can’t you get it.” When I grew up, it was all regarding listening to your bestloved deejay and finding out what the hit songs were. If you liked what you heard on the radio you ran down to the record store and purchased the 45 record. Then you ordinarily purchased the album. “Yea, it was fun. I love vinyl, as a matter of fact I’m working on a project now and we might end up putting it on vinyl as well because there’s a whole new market, kids are discovering the fact that vinyl sounds a hell of a lot better than digital.” I miss that echo effect sound from all those classic 45 records. I’m not sure if we’ll be competent to ever master that wondrous sound ever again. Jim McCarty of TheYardbirds accorded with me when I spoke with him various weeks ago, that magical sound on those early records may never be duplicated. “Well a lot of it had to do with the live chambers. CBS records in Hollywood where the Raiders cut most of their stuff, they had two special echo chambers that were just… well you’ve heard Simon & Garfunkel, Raiders, it all sounded great. Capitol Records had these echo chambers designed by Les Paul as a matter of fact. Yea all that stuff -Frank Sinatra, The Beach Boys they all sounded great. I have a lot of my old equipment, a lot of the same instrumentation that I applied back in the 60′s and I may get gorgeous close but you cannot duplicate that echo. However a friend of mine has gone around and sampled a lot of the old chambers so he may get like 99% of the way there. It’s an all new technique though.” There seemed to be a lot of pressure on those artists back in the 60′s, pressure to get a hit record on the radio along with a grueling touring schedule and neverending TV appearances. “I joined my basi band when I was like 14 years old and formed the Raiders with Paul when I was like 17 or 18. So I’ve been on the road all my life and for a lot of strange reason I still like it. I guess I’ve never grown up. That’s what’s so good when it comes to The Happy Together Tour; we’re back on the road again. You cited McCarty, we were lucky we had the show Where the Action Is. It was a outstanding way to debut your record and everyone saw it at once. Although we did tour, there was like various years there where we were on the road like perchance 200 nights a year.” Do you think it was that kind of discipline that made the 60′s music scene so great? “I don’t know if it was the discipline or the sheer joy of playing rock & roll. I do not forget my initial record contract; I would have remunerated them a nickel a record, you know? Anything to make music, and it wasn’t with regards to the bucks it was with regards to playing music, and being on TV, and playing in front of crowds.” Yea, what was the fame like Mark; I do not forget your picture being plastered on the front cover of each teen magazine around? “It was a amusive thing, in my mind there were two Mark Lindsay’s. There was one guy that was on TV and then the magazine’s and stuff, and then there was the real me which I knew wasn’t like that guy. I was kind of having a hard time putting the two together. Inside I was kind of this timid kid from Idaho but when I got on stage everything changed.” I think a great deal of of us kids identified more with bands like the Raiders and Turtles because you were one of us. You were “American” bands. “Well, we were the American Revolution.” And you wore that que or ponytail. “And you know I wish the heck that I had put a Copyright on that because just think how a heap of Hell’s Angels would have been paying royalties right now.” Are you still sporting the ponytail (que) or is it a thing of the past? “It’s come and gone with regards to four dissimilar times. I’ve grown it and cut it off. Right now I don’t have it, I cut it off with regards to three years ago but who knows I may begin growing it back again, it comes and goes.” I wanted to ask you when it comes to a song you did in 1966 called “Little Girl in the 4th Row” from The Midnight Ride album, was there actually a girl in the fourth row that you were singing about? “Being on tour and you look out at the audience and there’d be this babe, you know? But you know that there was no way in the world that you’d ever be competent to meet her, you may see her out there, but like as soon as the show was over BAM -you were on a bus or a limo or whatsoever to the airport or wherever you were going and never stick around, so it was kind of like one of those things. Then Mark begun to sing galore of the lyrics to the song, “Maybe someday you’ll be closer than four rows away.” So you never genuinely got to meet her Mark? “Well actually I did, believe it or not in Buffalo New York in 1967 there was this priest that come up before the show and after a soundcheck before the show curtain opened. He said, ‘Mark, I’m kind of the unofficial greeter here, there’s these little girls that are sitting out here that would love to meet you.’ So I said, ‘Sure fetch them on back.’ So there were three girls that came back, and one of them was really- genuinely cute, she had these cat eye glasses and there was this instant attraction, and I thought wait a minute this girl is 14 years old this is not going to happen. So I gave her a rose and a kiss on top of the head and that was it. Fast forward to the 80′s, I’m in this meeting in Beverly Hills to do this mercantile for this huge corporation and appear at one of their functions. And I’m there with this gal and one of the guys from the agency. And this girl and I just hit it off instantly, and we’re sitting there laughing and the guy says, ‘Well I might as well leave; it’s apparent that you two recognise each other.’ And I said, ‘No-no, we’ve never met,’ and the girl said, ‘Actually we did meet a lot of years ago but you wouldn’t do not forget it.’ I said, ‘When did we meet?’ She said, ‘Buffalo in ’67.’ I said, ‘You’re the girl that I gave the rose to.’ And I ended up marrying her.” You’re kidding me? “Nope, that’s my wife now.” Wow, what a great story Mark. “Oh yea. It was right, we were like star-crossed lovers. It was meant to be but it was just too early the primary time around.” That is amazing. “My life reads like a novel and so I’m working on a book.” Yea, I did listen that you were working on a book. As a matter of fact my firstborn book was freed not long back – it’s called Check the Gs -The True Story of an Eclectic American Family and Their Wacky Family Business. How far are you along in your story? “Well you recognise I’m closely done, I’ve written it and rewritten it three or more times and I’ve been working on it for 10-15 years. But what happens is each time I get almost finished, I start out reading it and I say no, no, no, that’s not the way it actually happened, I’m attempting to make myself look too good here, this isn’t actually real. So I go back and write what actually happened without genuinely stretching the fabric over the real stuff you know? So as I’ve done that assorted times and perchance as I get a little older I get a little more honorable with myself. So I’m in truth getting close to the truth now and the truth reads better than fiction.” Are you writing this completely on your own or getting a heap of support with it? “No, I’m doing it myself. Actually a couple of years ago I sent a couple of chapters to a publisher and I said possibly I need a heap of help with this, and they no, no, no, we love your style just keep doing the way you’re doing. They wanted to make a deal but I said I’m not ready yet.” Eventually, like I did, you’re going to say enough, it’s ready, I’m done. “Well, when it’s right it’s right! It’s like writing a song, I’ll work on it in my head -and it’s awful back in the day I use to write a song and that’s it outstanding -spitted it out you know. Now I work a little harder on them and just keep working on it until I start out taking things out and when I start out taking things out I figure it’s time to stop.” My book took two years to write and I look back and say where did those two years go? My mind was wholly focalized at that time on the story. “It’s a consuming art but it’s worth it. And when you get through it you’ve got something you may look at for the rest of your life.” When we leave this planet, well… you already have your legacy; I guess I’ll have mine with my book. “No, I’m still working on mine; I’ve got a lot more stuff to do. I kind of hit a renaissance amount of time and I’ve written more songs in the last eight months than in the former eight years. And I’ve got a couple projects going, can’t genuinely talk in regards to them but one of them if it happens, will fulfill my horoscope. Back in the 60′s, Gloria Stavers, you noted 16 Magazine; she was the editor of 16, she gave me for my birthday one year my horoscope by Linda Goodman, a private horoscope right, and it anticipated that you were going to end up with the mansion up on the hill, and sure sufficient I shared this big mansion with Terry Melcher, and with regards to a sports car in the garage and I had the red Ferrari in there but she said these things will not make you happy you’re going to want more, you’re going to move on past this and do all these things and then become more widely known and esteemed then you ever thought you could. But it won’t make you happy. But much later in life you’re going to have a second career that’s going to be so extraordinary that it will closely out eclipse your primary career entirely. You’ll be known by millions more people. So I’m working on that and so if that comes true then there you go. And if this project works, that may happen, but I can’t say anything more regarding it than that, but wait and see.” Tell me a little bit in regards to Terry Melcher, he was an crucial guy in the 60′s wasn’t he? “Terry was genuinely the sixth Raider, if you listen to any of the songs up to the primary record that I developed which was Too Much Talk; before that Terry was on each Raider record. We’d finish a song and he and I would go back into the studio later and he and I would mainly do the background. He had this great high sounding voice and it just blended so well. He was a big percentage of the Raiders sound. He was real instrumental in helping the Raiders in getting the hitmakers they were and I genuinely miss him, he’s gone now.” He left us much too soon, didn’t he? “Sure did, the last four or five years before he died, I said come on Terry let’s get back in and write something, let’s do something again, and he said, well…I don’t know. But his last big song was “Kokomo,” (The Beach Boys) he’s all over that for sure.” Yea, Terry Melcher was instrumental to so numerous important bands- including The Beach Boys and The Byrds. When I attended broadcasting school back in the late 70′s, all my instructors were deejays with illustrious broadcasting careers and they all had Dick Clark stories. What was it like to work with Dick Clark? “Well, he was exclusively professional. When the camera would come on or the Microphone would come on and he would be all smiles. He was very much a professional and if something didn’t go his way you knew when it comes to it. But he got done what he wanted done and done his way and it sure worked for him.” So Dick Clark was also instrumental to the Raiders success right? “Well sure, he had an idea for Where the Action Is; he hired us for the pilot because we worked very cheap, and when he sold the idea to ABC he hired us for a thirteen week period. He knew how visual we were right and we would work cheap, and he told me years later, ‘You know what? I thought I’d hire you guys for thirteen weeks and whenever the show took off I’d hire a real band.’ So they liked what they saw and by the end of that thirteen week amount of time we had become that real band. We were the house band for almost three years.” You guys cranked out a great deal of hits man, but what actually astonished me is that “Indian Reservation” was your only Number One hit? “Yea, even “Arizona” which was up to where it made platinum but not Number One. But we did have a good deal of gold records, it was the only Number One and the funny thing is it was suppose to be a follow up to “Arizona.” It was a Mark Lindsay record, I devised it and I commonly didn’t fabricate myself, Jerry Fuller did, and when I got through with the record Jack Gold said, ‘Why don’t you put it out as the Raiders, you develop the Raiders and they need a hit.’ So we put it beneath the name of the Raiders and it became the greatest selling hit in the history of CBS records.” Any repents for calling the band Paul Revere? (Keyboardist Paul Revere Dick continued to tour without Mark using the Raiders name) “In the beginning, way back to the beginning before we got on CBS, we signed our firstborn record contract on a little label called Gardena and the owner said, ‘You got to sign the contract and sign your full legal name,’ so my full legal name is Mark Allen Lindsay and I signed my name and then everyone else signed their name and Paul’s name was signed Paul Revere Dick, that was his full name. Then he looked over at us and said, ‘Paul Revere…Paul Revere, Paul Revere, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait…a…minute! That’s a great gimmick. I mean the Downbeats are okay but Paul Revere now that’s a hook. Everybody knows Paul Revere’s ride come on.’ He said, ‘I’m going to call this band Paul Revere & the Nightriders or something’ and Paul exceptionally hated it because he’d been teased all his life in school about, ‘Hey Paul Revere- where’s your horse?’ So he just dropped his introductory name Paul and went by the name Revere Dick. But when our initial record came out, our original record said Paul Revere & the Nightriders. And though the name (Using Paul Revere) did cause a great deal of confusedness but it’s in all probability a lot like The Dave Clark Five where Mike Smith was the lead singer and Dave Clark (the drummer) was the name of the band.” There are so a lot of bands running around out there without the basi lead singers anymore. “Well, what are you going to do…what are you going to do. But when you see the Happy Together tour you’re going to see the real deal here, I’ve sang each hit that Paul Revere & the Raiders ever had. And Mark & Howard from The Turtles, if they’re not the real deal then I never saw one.” I’m in truth looking forward to the show, and I’m hoping to get a pass to cover the show from backstage. I want to take a lot of pictures. “Tell them Mark said that they’d better do it or I won’t do “Kicks.” I’ll unquestionably tell them that. My favored Paul Revere & the Raiders tune has always been “Good Thing.” “Yea we’ll be doing that, I love that tune, when we do it on stage it sounds just like we did on the record. The guys in the band all sing like birds or The Byrds -I’m not sure. But I do my best to make the stuff that we do sound like in the day or better you know. So there you go.” You’ve always had a outstanding voice and your voice today sounds like your only 35 years old and it appears that you take actually good care of yourself. (Mark is 69 years old) “Well, I walk six miles a day; I get up around three or four in the morning and out by sunrise. That’s where I write, I’ll be on the trail. I try to eat right and exercise another hour when I get back home. So when I went in for a checkup not long back my doctor said, ‘Whatever you’re doing don’t stop it’ (After getting a recent physical his doctor said you could be 25 years old).” After Paul Revere & the Raiders you worked as an A&R executive with United Artist Records? “Yea, I thought I was qualified, I’d been an Artist, Producer, Writer, a Publisher, so I thought I knew how to pick songs and it was a lot of fun and I did pick a lot of hits. I had a outstanding run there until Capitol purchased the company and just like a radio station, somebody came in and said okay we’ve got your occupation now.” “What kind of hits did you pick?” “The original project that they gave me was the City to City album by Gerry Rafferty. They said, ‘Any hits on here?’I said, ‘Well, let me take it home and I’ll let you know.’ So I went home over the weekend and came back and said ‘Okay, Baker Street is a monster, it’s going to be regarding a million-seller, it’s way too long but we may edit it down. And they said, ‘What’s the next connection?’ I said ‘”Right DownThe Line,” not as big as “Baker Street” in all likelihood won’t trade rather a million -maybe eight hundred-nine hundred thousand, and the third single ought to be “Home And Dry” perhaps three hundred-four hundred thousand but that’s in regards to it.’ And they said, ‘You’re on!’ So we freed “Baker Street” and nobody’s playing it. So I went to Charlie Minor, the head of promotions and said, ‘Let me sit in your office, when you make all these calls to the stations and I’ll get on the extension. Ask them if they’re on it yet and, if they’re not, why they’re not playing it. Don’t give them reasons to play it. Ask them why they’re not playing it.’ So he did and I listened and wrote down all these notes. One station said, ‘Well, the guitar is a little too raucous for our format.’ Another said, ‘That sax thing shouldn’t be at the front, it must be at the end.’ And so on and so forth. I had a little studio in my house. I went home, got out a razor blade and made 17 dissimilar habit edits for these 17 stations. I threw them on Charlie’s desk on Monday morning and said, ‘Okay, send these out and ask them why they won’t play them now.’ And I guess possibly they were so flattered that we’d made a habit edit for their station – now, with digital stuff, of course every one makes their own habit edits. But they had said, ‘We’ll take you on temporarily,’ so when that happened they said, ‘Okay you got the gig.’” Do you still talk with Paul (Paul Revere Dick) at all? “We talk occasionally; we haven’t played together for years. You guys are always asking me would you ever do something together and there was awhile when I’d say no but lately I don’t give a crap you know, why not? It might happened, it might not, if it does fine, if doesn’t that’s cool too.” It seems like Paul’s version of the band took a wholly dissimilar direction with more of a comedic flare, almost like a lounge act. “Paul is a outstanding natural comedian; when he grew up his heroes were like Danny Kaye and the Marx Brothers and humans like that. And he just loved comedy. Now he’s got a band and he does comedy bits and they play the hits and it’s agreeably diverting but it’s not the Raiders that I remember. But as long as he’s putting persons in the seats he’s doing the right thing.” Mark, I want to thank you so much for spending galore time with me today, and I look forward to meeting you in person backstage at The Happy Together show at Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater on July 19th. “I look forward to meeting with you Ray, thank you.” Order my new book called Check the Gs -The True Story of an Eclectic American Family and Their Wacky Family Business. Order your copy NOW at http://rayshasho.com/ -You’ll LIVE it! You may contact Ray Shasho at rockraymond.shasho@gmail.com
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Anco Contoured Wiper Blades Work Great
Decent, but could be better