Fact #73241
When:
Short story:
The Zombies, The Shangri-Las, The Nashville Teens, The Shirelles and others play the first night of ten days of shows at The Brooklyn Fox, New York City, USA.Full article:
Colin Blunstone (The Zombies) : When we landed at New York, we were picked up from the airport in two black limousines. We really thought 'Hey, this is great. This is stardom.' The next day we got the bill. We hadn't ordered limousines but we had to pay.
Rod Argent (The Zombies) : I've still got the programme for that. It was brilliant. It was a bit mixed for me because, in those days you had to have a load of inoculations before you went to America, which you don't now, and I reacted badly to that. And with the time changes and everything, I was quite thrown out. I had ulcers all down my throat and was generally unwell during that whole trip.
In spite of that, my first memory is of a customs official who suddenly started speaking to us in this weird voice which I later discovered was an American's idea of an English accent, sort of Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. But he invited us to Christmas dinner with him and his family, and we went. I remember Colin getting very drunk and trying to jump on his daughter, which did somewhat sour the Christmas spirit. I remember the customs man being very dour-faced as he drove us back to our hotel, especially when Colin had to get out and be sick on the side of the road. Quite funny actually.
I also remember a weird meeting with … I mean, there we were, No1 in America, more or less headlining a Brooklyn Fox Murray The K show and we didn't really make any money out of it. Nor did we make any money out of the Dick Clark tour which followed.
Rod Argent : The upside of it was meeting Patti La Belle and Chuck Jackson, Ben E. King, The Drifters, seeing these great black artists at first hand, talking to them, getting to know them, and they would tell us about other artists, like Aretha Franklin and Nina Simone.
On the big holidays, like Christmas Day, it would be mainly black audiences. We did eight shows a day, from eight in the morning until eleven at night, and we would hear really shivery things like, Chuck Jackson would stop singing on the choruses and the whole audience would shout the chorus out to him. Or, you'd have Patti La Belle, or Dionne Warwick on the side who would make up an impromptu backing group, and Chuck would do Since I Don't Have You and they would make up these impromptu backing vocals to him. They were the real highlights.
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Rod Argent (The Zombies) : I've still got the programme for that. It was brilliant. It was a bit mixed for me because, in those days you had to have a load of inoculations before you went to America, which you don't now, and I reacted badly to that. And with the time changes and everything, I was quite thrown out. I had ulcers all down my throat and was generally unwell during that whole trip.
In spite of that, my first memory is of a customs official who suddenly started speaking to us in this weird voice which I later discovered was an American's idea of an English accent, sort of Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. But he invited us to Christmas dinner with him and his family, and we went. I remember Colin getting very drunk and trying to jump on his daughter, which did somewhat sour the Christmas spirit. I remember the customs man being very dour-faced as he drove us back to our hotel, especially when Colin had to get out and be sick on the side of the road. Quite funny actually.
I also remember a weird meeting with … I mean, there we were, No1 in America, more or less headlining a Brooklyn Fox Murray The K show and we didn't really make any money out of it. Nor did we make any money out of the Dick Clark tour which followed.
Rod Argent : The upside of it was meeting Patti La Belle and Chuck Jackson, Ben E. King, The Drifters, seeing these great black artists at first hand, talking to them, getting to know them, and they would tell us about other artists, like Aretha Franklin and Nina Simone.
On the big holidays, like Christmas Day, it would be mainly black audiences. We did eight shows a day, from eight in the morning until eleven at night, and we would hear really shivery things like, Chuck Jackson would stop singing on the choruses and the whole audience would shout the chorus out to him. Or, you'd have Patti La Belle, or Dionne Warwick on the side who would make up an impromptu backing group, and Chuck would do Since I Don't Have You and they would make up these impromptu backing vocals to him. They were the real highlights.