Roy Loney

Teenage Monster —
California Born and Bred

Interview by John Battles

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Around the same time Cab Covay made a short b/w Groovies promo film called King Of The Cuts and a “werewolf” movie with band members in it. The band played at The Matrix, The Fillmore, and The Avalon, but mostly at smaller clubs. They opened for more famous bands including Cream, Blue Cheer, Steppenwolf, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Big Brother And The Holding Company, and The Jefferson Airplane. “We were pretty much frowned upon, here, in our early stage. We weren’t doing Top 40 stuff. We had these two minute songs, and they felt that we were an oldies group. We did play old songs, we got off on ’em, and we wrote songs that sounded like old songs. Our audience wasn’t big, we had our hard core of fans.We were outcasts here, because we didn’t really play what everybody else was playing. We didn’t do ten minute jams, we didn’t get really Psychedelic. We were still kinda good-timey rock’n’roll. We were considered an anachronism… But, not really… We weren’t doing The Crickets or something. I thought we sounded modern for the time, myself. The fact that you can listen to it now, and it still sounds good leads me to believe it may be true. We broke down and did a few long, bluesey jams, especially when we had to do three or four sets a night. At the last set, the harmonica player would be up there by himself, then another guy would come out… Like Cream used to do, one guy at a time, I do this little thing, then he adds his little thing., and it sort of ends up being a song… Then, we do two more songs, and we’re outta here! That’s when it was LATE, and we were getting tired.” The influences of other groups at the time were more obvious. “That’s true. If you listen to The Grateful Dead, you can see exactly where they’re coming from. When I used to see all these bands in the early days, all they did was covers, they would just do their favorite records, but twenty minute versions of them! I think their influences were pretty obvious!

     “We didn’t hang with the groups that much. We hung with this really large group of people called The Circus. Mostly actors and different musicians, and we just hung out a lot. It was just a huge family, and that was where we did most of our socializing. We met people through that, when people would kind of wander in and out. (Fish guitarist) Barry Melton was part of that for a long stretch, so were Country Joe and (Quicksilver guitarist) John Cippolina, people like that. I remember being at The Fillmore all night, watching a set, and when the show was over, at two, somebody said, ‘Everybody’s going over to (Mike) Wilhelm’s house, they’re gonna have more music in the basement,’ so, half the audience would end up in somebody’s basement for another couple of sets! I saw so many great bands like Quicksilver and The Charlatans playing in garages, basements and stuff, it was great.

People just wanted to play all the time and get real stoned a lot, too. That was a big part of it, (stoner voice) ‘Gettin’ stoooned!’ We didn’t hang with the Bill Graham people at all. Our manager - had worked for Bill Graham… He served as Bill Graham’s right hand man, but he quit Bill Graham to become our manager, which I thought might have caused a bit of a rift between them, and that was why Graham didn’t want to hire us for a while, though, eventually he did. He was a great man. I saw him work his way up from nothing, so I know he deserved everything he got. He was a son of a bitch, but he was a pretty great man, too.”

     In 1968 the band was signed to Epic. Loney had put down his guitar and concentrated on singing. Two singles were released, both with rockin’ covers on the A sides and originals on the Bs. “Rockin’ Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu”/”The First One’s Free” went top 40 in San Francisco. “Something Else”/”Laurie Did It” followed. All sides were also on The Flamin’ Groovies – Supersnazz released by Epic in ’69 around the same time as Dan Hicks And His Hot Licks – Original Recordings LP. Although both are excellent, neither was promoted well, reviews were scarce and sales were low. The Groovies’ album (with Bob Zoell’s great 30s style cartoon of the band on the cover) gets off to a rousing start with Loney’s “Love Have Mercy,” driven by boogie piano by guest musician Mike Lang. Loney starts with “Well I wanna tell ya we’re so happy you invited us into your home. We’d like to play a few songs for you right now. We hope you enjoy them as much as we enjoy bringing them to you. Yeah.” Then he starts singing “I say ye-aaaaaaaaaah! Love have mer- cy. Don’t want be no slave. The way I love that woman lead to an early gra- ave. My my my. Well that felt all-right! – Alright! Lets get real gone!…” The LP has four Loney originals, four Loney/Jordan originals and covers of Huey Piano Smith’s “Rockin’ Pneumonia…,” Little Richard’s “The Girl Can’t Help It,” and Eddie Cochran’s “Somethin’ Else” with “Pistol Packin’ Mama” in a medley inspired by Gene Vincent. “That’s exactly where it comes from, because Eddie Cochran’s on his version of ‘Pistol Packin’ Mama,’ and so we said, ‘That’s really cool, let’s just put the two together. ‘Somethin’ Else’ was a song nobody had ever heard. It’s really weird, it’s just one of his singles that just sort of died, didn’t go anywhere.” Slade later did a live version of the “Pistol Packin’ Mama”/“Somethin’ Else” medley, learned from The Groovies.