Born to Run (10 page)

There were adults like Tex and Marion all across the United States, real unsung heroes
of rock ’n’ roll who made room in their homes and in their lives to cart the equipment; to buy the guitars; to let out their basements, their garages, for practice sessions; who’d found a place of understanding between the two combative worlds of teen life and adulthood. They would support and partake in the lives of their children. Without folks like these, the basements, the garages, the Elks clubs,
the VFW halls would’ve been empty, and skinny, dreaming misfits would’ve had no place to go to learn how to turn into rock ’n’ roll heroes.

Our First Gig

The Castiles were named after a brand of shampoo George Theiss used. It was a name that fit with the times. There was still a remnant of the fifties doo-wop groups in it but it would also suit to take us toward the Valhalla of the rock and blues
skiffle we emulated. Our set list was a mixture of pop hits, R & B, guitar instrumentals, even a version of Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood” taught to us by Frank Marziotti so we would have a diverse repertoire. We even tucked an original song or two in here and there.

Our first gig was at the Angle-Inn Trailer Park on Route 33, just east of the Shore Drive-In. It was a summer afternoon cookout social
for the residents. We set up in the shade under the overhang of a little garage and stood in front of an audience of maybe fifty souls. Our equipment was at its most primitive. We had Bart’s drums, a few amps, and a mike plugged into one of the extra channels of our guitar amplifiers. The opening act was a local country group that featured as its singer a little girl about six or seven who stood
on a stool singing Patsy Cline songs into a big radio broadcasting microphone. They were pretty good . . . and competitive. When we started making our noise, they got really pissed off because the crowd was
responding. Dancing broke out. Always a good sign. Our lead singer did his breathing in “You Turn Me On,” sending George and me into silent hysterics, and we finished up with—you guessed it—“Twist
and Shout,” as the trailer court went its summer, down-home version of bonkers. It was a huge success, convinced us we could make music and put on a show. And also that our front man must be fired immediately. I still remember the exhilaration . . . we moved people; we brought the energy and an hour or so of good times. We made raw, rudimentary, local but effective magic.

Wipe Out

Frank Marziotti,
our bass player, was a veteran of the local country music scene. He was still in his twenties but had the appearance of a rotund Italian wedding singer. He had wavy black hair combed straight back above an ethnic face and looked like he’d just come off the line working next to my father rather than like he played bass in a blistering, young, soul-rebel rock ’n’ roll band. He struck a rather
discordant note in our image. He was the only true musician amongst us. He taught me plenty of country-style guitar and played the smoothest bass you ever heard. The only problem was at every gig we’d hear the same question: “Why’s your dad in the band?” It didn’t bother us but it started to bother him, so he made his graceful exit and blond-haired Curt Fluhr—Brian Jones haircut, Vox amp, Hofner violin
bass and all—came in to fill the position.

Bart Haynes, our hell-raising drummer, was impossible to put a leash on. He claimed to be mentally challenged and one of his famous quotes was “I am so fucking dumb.” He was a solid timekeeper with one bizarre quirk—he could not play the drumbeat to “Wipe Out.” In 1965, the performance of the Surfaris’ “Wipe Out” was the yardstick for all aspiring drummers.
This simple syncopated beat played on the tom-toms was considered the final sign of your mastery. Listening to it now, you can easily recognize it, great though it was, as a part for slobbering morons. But . . . the bottom
line was at some point during the evening, if a drummer wanted to go home with his bona fides intact, he would HAVE to play “Wipe Out.” Bart could not. No matter what he did
or how hard he tried, his wrists simply refused to tap out that rudimentary rhythm. There was plenty of decent drumming in the blood and bones of Bart Haynes but “Wipe Out” was nowhere to be found. As the nights wore on, the smirking calls would come from competing drummers in the rear of the crowd: “Play ‘Wipe Out.’ ” At first they would be ignored, then Bart would rejoin with a few fuck-yous under
his breath. Then . . . worst of all . . . he would be goaded . . . “Go on . . . Go on . . .” He’d say, “Play that motherfucker.” So we would. And the moment of the great drum break would arrive and he would fail, time and time again. His sticks clacking together in his hands, the simple beat somehow going haywire until a stick dropped, his face would run fire-engine red, and the show’d be over.
“You fuckers!”

Bart would shortly give up the sticks for good and join the marines. Rushing in one last afternoon, a goofy grin on his face, he told us he was going to Vietnam. He laughed and said he didn’t even know where it was. In the days before his ship-out, he’d sit one last time at the drums, in his full dress blues, in Marion and Tex’s dining room, taking one final swing at “Wipe Out.”
He was killed in action by mortar fire in Quang Tri Province. He was the first soldier from Freehold to die in the Vietnam War.

Vinnie “Skeebots” Manniello replaced Bart Haynes and was a swinging jazz-influenced drummer. Young, already married with a child by “Mrs. Bots,” he contributed enormously to the professionalism of our band. From there on out it was YMCAs, CYOs, high schools, ice rinks,
roller rinks, VFW halls, battles of the bands, Elks clubs, supermarket openings, officers’ clubs, drive-in theaters, mental hospitals, beach clubs and any place you could set up a five-piece band that wanted decent local entertainment at a cheap price.

To the East

Freehold stood dead center between two socially incompatible teen cliques. The “rah-rahs’ ” turf stretched east to the Shore and the
“greasers’ ” territory ran south down Route 9. The floor at a Freehold Regional High School dance was a no-man’s-land of circling cliques, with the rahs in one corner, the greasers in another, the black kids in theirs. There was some communication amongst the upper echelons, in the interest of either stopping or starting a fight, but otherwise it was everyone to their own little world. The rah-rahs
danced to pop music, Top 40, beach music; the greasers took the floor to doo-wop, and the black kids to R & B and soul music. Motown was the only force that could bring détente to the dance floor. When Motown was played, everyone danced together. That tenuous brother-and-sisterhood ended with the last beat of the music and everyone slunk back to their UN-designated square of gym floor.

The rahs
were the jock, madras-wearing, cheerleading, college-bound, slightly upscale teen contingent who were the homecoming kings and queens and who lorded it over most local high schools. I’m sure they continue to do so today as “preps” or whatever their latest nom de guerre is. You were either in or out. I was way out. The ground zero of rah-rah territory was the Sea Bright/Middletown/Rumson area of
the Jersey Shore. There was money there and they did not let you forget it. When we came east to play upon their beaches on hot August afternoons, we were immediately put on notice that we hailed from the wrong side of the tracks. To get to the beach you had to wind your way through the stately homes of Rumson, Central Jersey’s most prestigious and exclusive neighborhood. Old-growth trees and palatial
estates tucked behind walls of lush green and iron gates let you know “you can look but you better not touch.” When you hit the shore at Sea Bright, the beachfront was a long strand of private beach clubs serving the well-heeled. A wall of cabanas and parking lots blocked access to God’s own Atlantic Ocean. The sea was there somewhere, but unless you
slipped onto the one public beach, you were
going to have to pay and pay big to get your toes wet. The teenyboppers, however, needed rabble-rousing entertainment on the weekends to get them off of Mom and Dad’s ass while their parents were getting sloshed on martinis at the beach bar. So . . . east meets west . . . With our rep slowly growing, we were imported from the wastelands to do the dirty work.

First we had to lug our equipment
onto the sand, where an extension cord had been laid for us to power up our amplifiers. It was sweltering, mid-August, and we were dressed in our full gear: black denim trousers, black Beatle boots, black faux-snakeskin vests purchased at the Englishtown auction, white tuxedo shirts, long hair (still a rarity) and very white “inlander” skin. We were not the Beach Boys. The response was always the
same. The parents were amused and bored, the girls flirty and curious, the boys hostile.

As little tanned bikini bodies lined up in front of us, a grumbling from the crew-cut sportsters rose up behind them. We had only one option: to play. Play until they liked it, until they could hear it and, most important, until they DANCED! You had to get the girls dancing! Once the girls started to dance,
everybody got happy and suddenly, you were not some threatening alien presence rocket-shipped in from the rings of Greaserville, you were just “in a band.” We knew our work and the day usually ended on a good note, with the kids talking to us, wondering about the way we looked, where we came from (the dark interior), and occasionally with a hard-ass trying to start a fight. These were pretty well-supervised
events and there was always an older lifeguard or an adult chaperone to keep the lid on. The parking lot was where you had to watch your back. You’d be busting your balls trying to squeeze your equipment back into the car and you’d hear, “What’d you say? What’d you say to me . . . ?” Of course, you hadn’t said anything. You were just being set up for a friendly takedown. Time to go home.

To the South

South of Freehold there were other challenges. The greasers were a teen subcult, leather-jacketed, sharkskin-suit-wearing, see-through-nylon-sock-clinging, beat-your-ass-with-an-Italian-shoe, pompadoured, preening, take-more-time-to-get-ready-for-school-in-the-morning-than-my-auntie-Jane, fight-you-at-the-drop-of-a-hat, Italian-descended, don’t-give-a-fuck-about-you inhabitants of their
own little terrestrial universe. Many of my better friends were “grease” (so named for their extensive use of hair products and fine, oily Italian skin). They were easier to deal with and understand than the rah-rahs as long as they didn’t hold a grievance with you. These were the kids destined to live the decent hardworking lives of their parents and take up their fathers’ trades, the future farmers,
homemakers and baby makers, if they could scoot through these few years of wild pounding hormones without getting hurt or hurting someone else. If they could keep out of jail for this short stretch, most would go on to be the spine of American society—fixing the cars, working the factories, growing the food and fighting the wars.

Also south, down Route 9, stood Freewood Acres, the first subdivision
any of us had ever seen. What distinguished Freewood Acres was not just its “first ever” status as a planned community but the fact that it counted as its inhabitants descendants of Genghis Khan: Mongolians. It was a long ride from the Russian steppes, but due to the grace of Alexandra Tolstoy, daughter of Leo of
War and Peace
fame, they’d arrived locally in the late forties after the war. Alexandra
had a foundation that assisted in getting them out of the Soviets’ reach, so, persecuted by Stalin and rabidly anti-Communist, they settled in Monmouth County. It was Siberia or New Jersey, a close one, but they were sprung from Stalin’s cages and ended up literally on Highway 9. Their children became my classmates at Freehold High.

The Mongolians were physically very big Asians and they went
strictly grease. Imagine the biggest Asian you’ve ever seen in three-quarter-length
leather, dress shirt and trousers, winkle-picker shoes and a slick black pompadour that added another inch or two of height on an already-north-of-six-foot frame. These guys had great-great-granddaddies who rode hard and conquered the world, and their New Jersey offspring looked like they could do it again if pressed.

The greasers copped their whole look from the school’s black community, which they were friendly with while at the same time virulently racist against. They were in deep pursuit of “uptown” style. The pristineness of the suits; the high-collared pink, lime green and baby blue shirts; the high-water trousers—their grooming was precise and not to be fucked with . . . YOU DO NOT TOUCH MY HAIR . .
 . YOU TOUCH MY HAIR AND WE FIGHT. A sensitive crew. The greasers were led by someone I’ll call “Tony,” a godfather before there was
The Godfather
. He walked through the halls of school with the most perfect coal-black pompadour you’d ever seen, attired impeccably in a three-quarter-length black waistcoat, with an Italian sex god’s face out of every good little cheerleader’s wet dream. He wore
it like a king and was the head of the local gang.

Outside of school you’d see Tony regularly in the teen clubs, often wielding a silver-headed cane (occasionally against someone). He’d drift in, a small-town Caesar, mirror-shiny shoes barely touching the ground, surrounded quietly by his minions. Wherever he walked, people made room.

South, into the greaser turf all along Route 9, was where
we went next to ply our trade. Route 9 held a chain of nightclubs and pizza parlors that on weekends catered to the teen set. First there was Cavatelli’s Pizza near Lakewood. It was just a small highway pizza joint where the owner decided to pick up some extra cash on Friday and Saturday nights by turning out the tables and chairs, hiring a band and holding small dances in front of the pizza counter.
The place was ruled by a hard-core contingent of greaser girls with teased bouffant hair, white lipstick, white skin, heavy eye shadow, leather boots, tight skirts, dive-bomber bras—think the Shangri-Las or Ronettes crossed with Amy Winehouse. The most powerful of these ladies was a gal
named Kathy. You came in, you set up your stuff, you started to play . . . and nobody moved—nobody. A very uneasy
hour would pass, all eyes on Kathy. Then when you hit the right song, she’d get up and start to dance, trancelike, slowly dragging a girlfriend out in front of the band. Moments later, the floor was packed and the evening would take off. This ritual played itself out time and time again. She liked us. We found out her favorite music and played the hell out of it. We became officially sanctioned
as one of “Kathy’s bands.” It was all great, as long as she didn’t like you
too
much. That would be very dangerous. Though Cavatelli’s Pizza was to my memory mostly a girls’ night out, there were always guys around the edges, and a murmur, a rumor, a sign of something more than friendship would not be good for your health. Along Route 9 you tried to cross no one.