Whatta Rush!
The Crowbar Interview...

Vancouver, August 15, 1971
By Rick McGrath & Mike Quigley





Here's the second of two interviews with this quintessential Ontario bar band. They made it big with "Oh, What A Feelin (Whatta Rush)" that marked the general optimism and youthfulness of the early Pierre & Maggie years. Kelly Jay and the group lived west of Toronto, between Hamilton and Ancaster off Mohawk Road at a spread called "Bad Manors" -- figures -- and, in sorta true Canadian fashion, Kelly was famous for his friends and acquaintances -- Ronnie Hawkins and John Lennon. Heck, these guys coulda backed Dylan! Again, here's the interview with the original 1971 Georgia Straight introduction...

It was last Thursday when I heard Crowbar were playing in Vancouver. Just across from the Georgia Straight office, in fact, at Gassy Jack's. So I stomped on over, heard a set, re-established contacts with Kelly Jay, met the rest of the group and set up an interview for the next day. Friday comes and Spiffy Mickey Quigley and I truck on down to the hotel and tape this monster first time out. Saturday and Monday I spent with the band farting around and trying to organize a free concert at All Season's Park. Generators, trucks, and essential assistance seem to be lacking when I needed them, so nothing worked. But I do have a promise that Crowbar will do a freebie the next time they're in town. Which shouldn't be too long.

Rick: What's been happening since you played the Gardens?

Kelly Jay: Everything's happened, man. Amazing thing: we played Nanaimo. That was so much fun. That's where I want to go back to. I want to play Nanaimo again.

Rick: Grease city.

Kelly Jay: I don't care, it was a great concert. All you could hear at the end of the show when the crowd left was the sound of meshing gears and rubber excruciating on the pavement. They got right into it so much If there's anything I can't stand it's a cool audience. I've got my rights too, man, and I can't stand a cool audience. They just turn me right off. They just sit there and they're looking for things to cut up and they're not concentrating on the fact that there's somebody there serving their senses to try and alleviate some pressures or whatever. And they're there just to be critical or compare you to Alvin Lee or whatever. But Nanaimo was great -- and I must say the Gardens crowd was fine, too.

But we want to play all the areas around here, like Prince Rupert, Prince George, Victoria. I think what we should do is just move out here for six months and just play all over.

After the Nanaimo show we went home (Ontario) and recorded "Happy People" which was an experiment in terror. But it's what we wanted to do. We wanted to make a commercial record and we made a record that was palatable to people who don't particularly digest Crowbar. I think if that record had some other band's name on it, it would have been accepted. But we have some people say "That's not what Crowbar sounds like, it's totally non-indicative of the group, and con sequentially I give it a one."

Mike: Out of what?

Kelly Jay: (laughs): Out of four million. It's got a good beat, easy to dance to...

Rick: I give it an eight, Dick...

Kelly Jay: That's the thing. we did a record that we wanted. It's not the follow-up to "Oh What A Feelin"," because it didn't have a follow-up and we've told everybody all along we're the smart-asses and big mouths and everything that our records are not open to critical acclaim because they're things that we're creating on record. We don't know enough about recording yet to make masterpieces and I don't think people should say things against it until our fifth record. I don't think they should say that about anybody's record.

Rick: Are you going to get into producing your own?

Kelly Jay: No, I don't think so, because when the group starts producing their own then they really start laying their own egos on the line and they start assassinating themselves. And that's like suicide. It's better to let somebody else make the decisions. First of all, though, you've got to watch your producer. It's got to be somebody who's got experience and does things that you like. One thing that we want to do is as many free concerts as people will set equipment up for us. It takes nothing for us to do a thing and it's more fun to do free things. The pressure is off and you can loosen up and it seems that you play better.

John: (lead guitar) It's the duty of every musician to get his rocks off every time he picks up his axe, because if he doesn't, he's being hypocritical

Kelly Jay: The idea of having the great pleasure of seeing some international superstar sitting around in a coffee shop, idly playing with the local band and ripping off a few snazzy runs is a bunch of horseshit. Everytime a musician picks up his guitar, like John sitting there rehearsing now (during the taping Ghetto was sitting on a bed practicing on his unamplified guitar) he should get it on. But I'm getting immune to it, like I don't even hear him. I can hum you every lick he's going to play, except for the new ones he's worked up. They're just as much a part of the group as the songs. They're not fillers. Like I really resent the American album which had them labelled as "Frenchman's Filler." They're not, man, they're things that these guys sit down with those funny wooden things with those wires on it and that they can make those things do. Rheal's got a million of them. And they'll always be on our albums. Always.

Rick: Tell me about your meeting with Trudeau.

Kelly Jay: OK. We got a letter just after we left here last time asking us if we would be interested working a job in Perth, Ontario. We sent them back a telegram saying forget it. Then we got another letter, this time a little more insistent, and they upped the money a little. We knew it was for the City of Perth, and we knew it was for town festivities, we knew it was a free concert and the town was paying for it, right? So we figured...like at Scarborough High School you can accept a lower price because you know it's the students' council and they haven't got the bread... and you know you can go in and it'll be a good concert. But if it's for some town council that they'll write it off at the end anyway and call it highway tax or something. And the old coffers are just packed in those places. So we got some good bread out of it. So we sent back a letter saying, 'Well, we don't know end they sent back a note saying Pierre Trudeau was going to open the festival We said, well, that's cool, and they said that would guarantee more money because we were working on a percentage of the gate and he was bound to draw 50 or 60 thousand". So we accepted the gig and all these mysterious things started happening.

We started getting phone calls from people asking us if there was any truth to the rumour that we knew Margaret Trudeau. There were rumours that Roly or me knew Margaret Trudeau in Vancouver before she was married. And we said, no, we didn't know her. But they kept insisting that she knew us. And we said, well, that's really neat man, groovy, she knows us.

Like, we know so many people. So then we get a phone call a week before the gig and the Secretary of State starts laying all this stuff on us like the Trudeaus would request would we please reserve some time to talk to them and could we this and could we that, and we said, hey we're travelling in heavy company.

So we said sure and they gave us a few things that said no guns, no explosives, please don't bring any narcotics or please this that and the other thing so we promised that we would be very straight and harmless and not carry any blunt objects or anything. We showed up in Perth and they had done numerous security checks on us, like analyze our records to see if we were potential assassins.

Mike Quigley: Like play them backwards.

Kelly Jay: Yeah, and hear Paul McCartney's phone number. Or his underwear size. So we arrive there and he arrives there in his big chopper with the exhaust pipes off, does two passes of the city and everybody knows that this big helicopter is going to land. And he's really got his presentation and thing together. So he lands and... you've got to picture the area that we played in. We played on a raft in the middle of a river. On a RAFT. We're getting shocks all night and it's raining, yeah . .

John: (lead guitar) And this guy says don't go near the water because there might be a power line in it and there's enough voltage to kill a cow.

Kelly Jay: So, at any rate, they have this big stand set up behind us and then the pool, and then the area where the people sit and watch the band. When he arrives, Trudeau walks up on this ramp and they introduce him and they say things and when they're up on the thing we're all standing on the raft trying to figure out which one was him and there was this guy with a fringe jacket and we thought it was Stomping Tom Connors or somebody and, shit, it turns out to be him. And just didn't look like he should. So he came down the stairs and sat in his area to watch us. So we play and after the set we see him and Sownie got a good line off. He asked us if we called ourselves Crowbar because we pried people's minds open? And Roly said, no, actually Ronnie Hawkins gave us the name because we could mess up a crowbar in 10 seconds. And they all laughed and Sownie said actually what he really means is we could fuddle-duddle a crowbar in 10 seconds.

And so we saw Trudeau after and we gave him and Margaret one of our Crowbar necklaces and Roly got it stuck over his head, actually his hair was so long on the back of his head that he got it stuck over his nose. And he was yanking it and it wouldn't move and so Roly pushed in his nose and pulled the chain over his nose. And he said that "Oh What A Feeling" was his favourite record. And he was interested in the music scene and that, so we laid down this trip on him that we wanted to work in Canada. We worked LA., and it was groovy, but. . .just look out that window, those pine trees and mountains are just so much more impressive than palm trees. This fucking country is incredible. We want to stay in Canada. Nobody believes us when we say that.

Rick: I believe you. Tell me a bit about it.

Kelly Jay: Crowbar is a group of six losers. We've been losers all along. When we played the bar circuits we were always too out of step, we didn't play enough top 40. We never got hired because our hair was too long and our tuxedos weren't pressed enough. When we did wear frilly shirts they were always too frilly and things like that.

John: (lead guitar) We went up to Timmons with these new Walking Suits and frilly shirts and everybody comes out and looks and yells "Fuckin' queers!"

Kelly Jay: No, really, they come after you with chain saws and things like that.

Rick: A quick hair cut.

Kelly Jay: Yeah, cut your hair with a chain saw.

Rick: If you had the opportunity of making the Canadian music scene any way you wanted it, what would you do?

Kelly Jay: First of all, I'd stop the total horseshit HYPE that just because a group is Canadian, it's good. You know what it's like? It's like pushing a car to get it started. . .

Rick: . . .and finding out there's no gas in the tank?

Kelly Jay: Yeah Like we've gone nuts with this CRTC thing. First Canadians had no talent, to all of a sudden Canadians are gods. We've been the garbage can of the United States; if a record didn't make it in California, they'd send it to Canada. They wouldn't send it to New York. That's why the whole story when we were a little dumber was that, as a country, we would say, "Wow, man, I went to Buffalo last weekend and picked up ten new Gene Vincent singles. They aren't even released up here, man, look at this, "Blue Jean Bop." It won't be released for months and I'll be the rage at Maggie's party."

And there was great exoduses going to Buffalo to pick up these singles. It was always a contest to see who could get Little Richard on the freakiest labels. It had to be black, yellow and cerise. And by doing all this to Canada, the guys in the States created a Frankenstein monster. They created a culture of rock musicians that had just insane tastes. This band, Crowbar, we could sing "Take Good Care of My Baby" and make it sound great. That's because all the hip groovy people have forgotten that Bobby Vee did it first and they just remember it was a great song.

But at the same time we could do things by Mose Allison or Ike and Tina Turner or James Brown, Otis Redding and all the heavy stuff, because we had a cross section of those records; I even used to buy Pat Boone records. I still play "Tennessee Saturday Night" and think it's one of the best boogie records ever made. You know something? Mack Rebenack wrote a song on Frankie Ford's Sea Cruise album, which, by the way, was a monster album. But at that time Frankie Ford was really heavy into the rock and roll thing.

Mack Rebenack wrote the songs. Mack Rebenack was also partners with Sonny Bono, of Sonny & Cher. Mack Rebenack is now Dr. John, the heaviest fuckin' dude in music today. And I love Dr. John, man, I really dig him. But he used to be Mack Rebenack, who wrote songs for Frankie Ford and played guitar on all those sessions. You know what I mean? It's such a fuckin' double standard. That's why we say to people "Do you remember when your hair wasn't long or have you always been really neat?"

Rick: Of course, you were really cool when your hair was short.

Kelly Jay: Of course you were. And if people didn't believe it, you'd kick the shit out of them.

Rick: Now you just don't kick them.

Kelly Jay: Yeah, it's just peace, baby, and you try to get it together with his head.

John: (lead guitar): Groovy, baby, like outasight, man.

Kelly Jay: Nowadays, if somebody starts giving you static you just say let's sit down and rap about it. In the old days you'd back your '56 Ford over him.

Rick: You'd start playing with the creases in your chinos and that would mean that your feet were ready.

Kelly Jay: I remember that. And I remember dances where guys would break Coke bottles and give it to you right in the face and think nothing of it. A good thing to do is carry an old photograph of yourself from about five or six years ago. Not a high school photograph, because that was horseshit too. That was the phoniest day of your life. And if you cut it all off today and dressed up like you did in 1966 people would instantly revert and treat you just like they would have then.

We just don't understand that their minds haven't progressed like ours. Their minds haven't been liberated. They haven't had time to smoke a joint and say, yeah, that park really is beautiful and those totem poles, think of how much work it took some cat to sit down and carve one of those. Where were those people's heads at that build all those totem poles?

Rick: Not only that, they carved them out of jade chisels.

Kelly Jay: Jade?

Rick: Yeah, I know this guy who collects Indian artefacts and he's got this piece that came from Stanley Park. It's deep green and honed down to a fine edge. No metal shit for those guys.

Kelly Jay: Yeah. We know this old guy in Brantford who collects Indian things and he's got this arrowhead made out of red quartz.

Rick: Anyway, to get back to the hype thing we were talking about before.

Kelly Jay: Yeah, it's got to be changed. I believe in true advertising. Tasteful advertising. I hate garbage.

Rick: That's different than hype, which infers that you're making something better than it really is. What else would you do?

Kelly Jay: The second thing, which is probably the most important thing, is the expression of oneself alone. Like each person in this band can do something entertaining on their own. Because the other five have given him the confidence. The other five have said that you're an entertaining person. You make me laugh or I like the way that you do this. So therefore it makes each person have some confidence in themselves and some conviction that they know they can do it. Like Sownie could be a stand up comedian. He's hilarious. He's a good actor.

This band is being put together with a substantial background for movies. We're actually going to make an excellent movie some day. Not a "Help" movie or anything, but an extension of our music. Or our lives, which we like to attribute our music to. And most bands lack that. Most bands figure that you have to have this thing down that they need each other.

It's not true that you just go out and buy a Fender Telecaster and a super Bassman and just sit down and listen to Hendrix and Clapton learn riffs end put them together. It's just not that. Any asshole can do that. If I see a band doing that I'm suddenly just turned off and I could care less. That's a pretty standard thing of people saying that you should like somebody else and the minute you say it you're dead. That's an old thing.

I honestly believe that if a kid is sixteen years old and he really wants to make it and he's embittered by the fact that he hasn't got a hit record, well, the kid should be taken aside by some older musician and taken into a dressing room somewhere and the older musician should get the kid stoned and then he should BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF HIM. Ha should break the kid's fuckin arm and say now play. That's what it comes down to.

John: (lead guitar) Far out man, like outasite . . .

Kelly Jay: "Whiskey a Go Go, eh, dad, that's really fucking cool and groovy and fuck you only play rock and roll" and I'd just like to lace one of these guys right in the mouth. Usually one of these guys has the talent of a clam. He plays as well as a clam. And you know a clam can do any lick that Eric Clapton can do. But they don't have anything to offer themselves. They don't say here's something I made up. Like Brahmin, I've heard nothing but rave reviews about them because they have a mime artist with the group. But I've never seen them. One group I really liked from here for energy and for being a self-professed Top 40 band was the Night Train Review. They had a lot of energy and their horns were together.

But there are some kids that come along . . . Like this Mark somebody I saw in New York. 13 years old and I'd like to drop a piano on his head. Because he's really good. He just plays and shit does he sing. He's going to put an album out in the fall and when he does it's just goodbye Elton John. Elton John blew Feliciano off and this kid is going to get Elton John.

Rick: I can't say I feel too badly because I really don't dig Elton John.

Kelly Jay: I think Elton was one of the grossest put ons. Like, I can see that the cat plays excellent piano -- and he's got some things but anyone who would put on a brand-new Porky Pig shirt with sparkly boots and then not wear them outside is just a little phoney.

John: (lead guitar) He's just a produced phenomena.

Rick: He's like Paul Buckmaster's kid who's got stuck in his licks. And Buckmaster is getting a little thin too. Did you hear Lenny Cohen's new album? Well, Buckmaster arranged the strings and horns on it and guess what . . . right out of Elton John land.

Kelly Jay: Leonard Cohen, what a treat. That's like the first time I came here I found Don Franks living at the Ranch Motel, which is what he wanted to do, to be alone, and then talking to him because he was my hero all these years. Because he's so fucking grossly underrated. He had to be the stupidest man in show business because he always had these stupid Parts in Jericho.

One thing that always came through though, was that h was the best in Jericho. He was always the most interesting character. Kelly, that show he did that opened and closed on Broadway in one day. I've sat over in that hotel and listened to him sing boogie songs that I would pay five dollars to go and hear him sing. And even in Finian's Rainbow I could see that he wasn't happy being Woody. Sometime I'll do a whole thing on Don for you guys. We just can't let that man get away.

There's guys who really know. Directors and people. These transformers of entertainment. Without that your Lionel train doesn't go; the train is a gas but it needs the power that says when it goes. These assholes that are the transformers say now you can be good and no, no, now you're an eight millimeter home movie. Those cats that do that know Franks is a genius.

They know he won't do anything he doesn't want to do and now they're making him suffer. Well, me, and about five people like me are going to pull the plug on those motherfuckers, man. Because the transformers no good without the wall plug. And then there's going to be the fuse box, and then someone's going to say Oh yeah, well I'm Niagara Falls, but sooner or later we'll get to them.

But at least you can say to these people that are the moguls that they said: (to Franks) "I'm sorry, you badmouthed our star, Sheila Armpit, and she's much too valuable a property for you to fuck around. You're a nobody and you don't have appeal and we'll teach you that you can't do what you think you can do, artist smart-guy fascist pinko" and they start to get nasty.

Rick: And a little confused, too.

Kelly Jay: Just check out these street musicians you've got here. Now that's a great thing. The most admirable people I've ever seen. They're out there getting their chops together and at the same time getting paid for it. And some of them are incredible musicians, really fine. And I would like to see that happen all across Canada. It would bring humanization back into music and it would reassert the fact that music is made by people and not by speakers with chrome covers on it.




Mike Quigley and Kelly Jay compare guts beside the pool at the Bayshore...



About Crowbar

• Larry Atamniuk (drums)
• King Biscuit Boy [aka Richard Newell] (harmonica)
• Roly Greenway (bass)
• Kelly Jay [aka Blake Fordham] (vocals, piano)
• Rheal Lanthier (guitar)
• Richard Bell (keyboards)
• John Gibbard (slide guitar)
• Sonnie Bernardi (drums; replaced Atamniuk 1970)
• Jozef Chirowski (keyboards; replaced Bell 1970)
• Ray Harrison (keyboards; replaced Chirowski 1977)
• Rick Birkett (bass; replaced Greenway 1977)

Crowbar's roots can be traced back almost as far back as Roly Greenway's career. Having played bass in The Centuries (1959), Joe Pino & The Starlites (1962), and The Ascots (1963). It was in the Ascots that he met guitarist Rheal Lanthier and the two played the Vegas lounge circuit for two years with the likes of Liberace and Zsa Zsa Gabor. The band broke up from sheer boredom and returned to Canada where Greenway joined Bobby Curtola's touring band.

In 1967, Greenway reformed the band with Lanthier as the New Ascot Revue where they recruited Kelly Jay, piano player/vocalist, and world renowned harmonica player Richard Newell, aka King Biscuit Boy. Newell had gotten his nickname during his tenure playing on and off with Ronnie Hawkins. Hawkins had asked Newell to assemble a new band so he grab the New Ascots plus Richard Bell (keyboards), John Gibbard (guitar) and Larry Atamaniuk (drums) to create the latest version of Hawkins' band called And Many Others.

Hawkins took the band to some of the most prestigious venues in rock including the Filmore East with the likes of Joe Cocker, Johnny Winter, and Mountain. However, Hawkins was unpredictable, and in 1970 while at the Grange Tavern in Hamilton, Hawkins came into the bar and fired the whole band exclaiming: "You guys are so crazy you could fuck up a crowbar in three seconds!" And thus a band, and a band name, was born.

The act resumed with a slight personnel change - Sonnie Bernardi replaced Atamaniuk on drums and Jozef Chirowski replaced Bell on keyboards. Along with King Biscuit Boy, Crowbar cut the Official Music album as the first Daffodil Records release in 1970. Critics were unanimous in their appraisal of the band. The ensemble toured with their most memorable performance at the Strawberry Fields Rock Festival near Toronto in the summer of 1970. A few weeks later, King Biscuit Boy and Crowbar parted ways - he to write material for the Gooduns album; they to prepare for the debut album Bad Manors.

Within three months, the international release of the album again garnered critical acclaim from magazines such as Creem and Rolling Stone. Crowbar was the first act to launch a record in the legislation era (a law designating the implementation of 30% mandatory Canadian content by all radio stations) with the single Oh, What A Feeling.

The song was also featured on the live album, recorded at Massey Hall, Larger Than Life was certified gold within three weeks of its release. Unfortunately, do to the drug connotation to lyrics in Oh, What A Feeling, the tune failed to gain airplay in the U.S. though it did do well in England.

As part of Pierre Trudeau's bid to gain the youth vote, his wife Margaret Trudeau who was a Crowbar fan, asked the band to become the opening act of Trudeau's re-election campaign in 1972. With rallies in such venues as Maple Leaf Gardens, Trudeau won the campaign and Crowbar became a household name. However, their popularity also spawned the need to incorporate and hire industry people to handle their affairs. Alas, that led to mismanagement and the band officially split up in 1974.

After several years in other personal projects, the members re-united (with the exception of Chirowski, who had joined the Alice Cooper Band) with two new members - Ray Harrison (keyboards) and Rick Birkett (bass) - for a winter tour in 1977-78. The band split up once more. Kelly Jay would go on to have an intermittent solo career; Roly Greenway was in the band Next briefly in 1976.
Fast forward to 1996 and the original Crowbar reunited without Kelly Jay for some good time revival shows and have been talking about releasing a new album.

DISCOGRAPHY

Singles
as KING BISCUIT BOY AND CROWBAR
• 1970 Corrina, Corrina (Daffodil)

as CROWBAR
• 1971 Oh What A Feeling (Daffodil)
• 1971 Happy People (Daffodil)
• 1972 Too True Mama (Daffodil)
• 1972 Dreams (Daffodil)
• 1972 Fly Away (Daffodil)
• 1972 Hey Baby (Daffodil)
• 1973 Million Dollar Weekend (Epic)
• 1974 All The Living Things (Epic)

Albums
as KING BISCUIT BOY AND CROWBAR
• 1970 Official Music (Daffodil)

as CROWBAR
• 1971 Bad Manors (Daffodil)
• 1972 Larger Than Life (Daffodil)
• 1972 Heavy Duty (Daffodil)
• 1972 The Best Of Crowbar (Daffodil)
• 1974 Million Dollar Weekend (Epic)
• 1992 The Best Of Crowbar [re-issue] (Daffodil)

Other
• 1971 "Snakes And Ladders" on 'Concept' (ARC) - compilation
• 1972 "Beaver And The Eagle" on 'Maple Music Vol.1 (MMJ) - compilation
• 1990 "Oh What A Feeling" on 'Made In Canada - Volume Two: Into The '70's' (BMG) - compilation