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From York Pennsylvania, my move to Los Angeles California was a revelation. The speckled golden hills and the Mediterranean
climate were a recapitulation of my earliest childhood memories of East Africa and to my astonishment, I felt I had finally
come home. Climate and geography breed character and the eccentric landscape into which I had just arrived was peopled with
an unusual amount of charismatic quirky characters.
My social life had little to do with high school and almost everything to do with the church my family went to: St. Nicholas
Episcopal in Encino. The Rector was a wild man named Father Evan R. Williams who lead the church's youth group on astonishing,
absurd, and unforgettable adventures. I joined the Episcopal Young Churchmen. Key members of this youth group considered ourselves
to be a motorcycle gang and it would be years later before I realized this core elite lacked one necessary ingredient: motorcycles.
Father Williams had been a friend of Alan Watts, one of the day's great popularizers of Eastern —particularly Buddhist—
thinking. Father had also know T. S. Eliot when Eliot had been some sort of Poet in Residence at Oxford. Father's rules for
young churchmen and women were few. When on one of his adventures there was no smoking of any kind. And there was no music
to be played on any of our adventures unless we ourselves (as opposed to our radios or cassette players) played it.
So Father Williams (ERW) was a sort of Welsh druid/priest in charge of a temporary and provisional quasi-anarchistic tribe
of teenagers. We had bards, chief of whom was a most charismatic fellow named Gary Cotton. He played a classical guitar strung
with steel strings which he would sling if not store without a case into the back seat of his Camero; consequently the soundboard
had cracked. He played not with a pick —picks broke too often— but with a button. And if we found ourselves up
in the San Bernardino mountains, on a county line beach we had named Ape Rock, or kipping it in the basement of Grace Cathedral
in San Francisco, Gary would sing us his versions of whatever the hits of the day were. Sometimes he changed the words to
suit our adventures: For instance the "see me, feel part of Tommy became for us a catalogue of our more notorious EYC expeditions.
"Simi, Filmore, Aperock, Piru"
He also had a few songs he had written. One was called "Nazarene Watermelons" and was a sort of neo-jugband skiffle tune about
one of the group's misadventures which had occurred before my time. In other words, I had no idea what it was about. However,
everyone else did and the motorcycle gang contingent always demanded that Gary play it. I would play lead guitar and somehow
this elevated me to co-bard status. The chorus of the song simply repeated the title. As a counterpoint, some would sing "Naz
Wat Naz Wat Naz Wat... etc." Boys, girls, we all sang and laughed and there was none of this holding hands up to Jesus. It
was a pleasure unto its own.
How we became a 'band' in this context is easy to see but what broke us out of the youth group had to do with several other
factors, key of which was that a classmate of mine named Dave Lustig (not an Episcopalian) had some tape-recorders. We named
ourselves The Wat after Gary's song and because there was already a band called The Naz.
Gary, Lustig and his tape-recorders, myself, and another EYC member named Phil Kemp assembled at my house. We recorded a few
songs with Phil on kazoo and bongos, myself on electric lead guitar and Gary on lead vocals and acoustic rhythm. This tape
is lost.
Phil took on a producer's role. We went on to record two whole 'albums.' Not only that, we convinced ourselves that we were
good. We had in fact stretched something amiable and charming into something amateurish if not downright awful. We would listen
to our 'albums' while cruising Van Nuys Blvd. in Phil's 1965 Rambler wagon. What could beat that? (The car was named the Midnight
Rambler, by the way.)
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| Prior to a Breaking and Recording: Dave Lustig, DNL, Phil Kemp |
We needed a piano for a session so we actually broke into the house of the church's organist emeritus while he was in Europe.
We snuck all our gear into his living room and recorded Gary playing "Let it Be" on his piano.
In Pennsylvania, I had been in a theoretical band: The Greatest Band that Never Was. My friend Dan Wilson applied 20th Century
aesthetic theory to rock n roll in order to come up with a popular art music. In theory we had been brilliant but we had no
idea how to play our instruments and our knowledge of music theory was nonexistent. In California, with the Wat on the other
hand, I basked in the complete lack of self-consciousness of my fellow music-makers.
I was writing songs which I would not share with them. But the songs were emerging so painfully and so malformed. Only one,
a song I called "Corn" was any good. I sent a crude recording of it to Dan. Dan and I maintained a furious correspondence
about music which also was not shared with my friends. We planned to find a drummer and (in York or LA) form a great rock
band which would have nothing to do with the Wat.
The Wat was a music of ease and sunshine. It was a way for me to begin to understand the simplicity of music. Gary became
a Born Again Christian and wrote a wonderful song about this conversion called "Cloudy." We didn't mind. We liked Gary. Nevertheless,
it pitted Gary theologically against Father Williams. I was very disappointed when I learned my family was moving to Toronto.
Phil's sister worked in the Schizophrenic Ward of the Westwood Veteran's Hospital. She booked the Wat to play for the patients
at the old Brentwood Theatre. We played there twice. Gary, wearing a surplus US Air Force flight suit, banged the hell out
of his guitar with a his button. Phil sat on a ladder and played card-board bongos. Gary's girl friend Leslie sang. So did
Mary Grayson niece of the famous Hollywood singer Kathryn Grayson . I played taste-less electric lead over everything.
Gary was heading out to the midwest to seminary school. We decided to end things with a rock festival —Watstock, of
course— in the church parking lot on New Year's Day 1971. Our friend Doug Poppin showed up to be the audience. Pat Meehan,
one of the fearsome bikers, showed up to play drums while Phil recorded the event. We couldn't understand why Pat drowned
us out. The Who had acoustic guitars and drums playing simultaneously and both could be heard clearly.
To our delight, a VW busload of hippies saw us as they were driving down Ventura Blvd. They pulled into the parking lot and
poured out of the bus, parking themselves in the several deck chairs we had put out for the audience. The hippies did not
even last a song before, shaking their heads with astonishment, they boarded their bus and left. It was our first hint that
perhaps we were not as good as we thought we were. Well. I'm sure Gary knew.
At the end of the month I was able to graduate from high school a half year early. To cellebrate, Phil, some of the gang,
and I went camping at Blue Point in Lake Piru. A few days later, they took me to LAX and bid me farewell.
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| DNL at Blue Point, Lake Piru in January 1971 |
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