People!: The '60s rock hitmakers with the Larry Norman connection

Wednesday 19th December 2018

Tony Cummings spoke to guitarist and founder of '60s band PEOPLE!, Geoff Levin, in the wake of the publication of Why Should The Devil Have All The Good Music?: Larry Norman And The Perils Of Christian Rock.



Continued from page 1

Tony: When you joined Scientology, was that a quick transformation or were they working on you for months and months?

Geoff: I would say, it was quick. Within a week we were converts.

Tony: Who's we?

People!: The '60s rock hitmakers with the Larry Norman connection

Geoff: My brother, Albert and Denny the drummer. Me being the leader of the group, it was key that they get me into it. There were many undercurrents we can't possibly cover in an interview, but if we go into more interviews then I could cover those details. Anyway, my brother who was two and a half years younger than me, he was a group member, I was the dictator. Well, I was second in command, Michael was the head. I was the musical interface, the minister of music. What I did was guide the direction of the band. Anybody could bring any idea in and that was always welcome. But we had a plan and Michael and I really were the ones creating it and I was administering it. All of a sudden, we had new mentors. We met some of the Scientology people in the mission there in San Jose; we were impressed by them and their knowledge or apparent knowledge in that they had the new quick fix, quick knowledge, like how can I be wise in six months? What they do in Buddhism that takes 30 years, I could do in six months. That was very attractive to young people like us at the time and we figured okay, two weeks and we're already beyond mere mortals. Like in karate, we have a different colour belt almost instantly, we're past white belt, we're on to green belt or brown belt.

Tony: Can we talk about the recording of the first album? At the time of the recording of the first album, who was writing the songs?

Geoff: It was the group. Realise that one side of the album was 'The Epic' which, in my understanding was the first rock opera. I don't think anyone had done anything like it prior to that. The chapter in that book is really inaccurate. Gene and Larry had their own lives; they'd come to work and then they'd go home. Neither one of them wanted to be part of the San Francisco scene, from what I understand, I know Gene didn't and I don't think Larry did either. He didn't even have transportation I don't think to get up to San Francisco. I drove, I had a car, my brother and sometimes Denny, we would go up to the Fillmore almost every week, usually during the week. We'd go up there, catch a concert, come home and rehearse the next morning. We used to do 'My Generation'. I loved The Who. They were one of my favourite groups; I just thought they were amazing. We got there early for their concert, this is when they were not that well known, they didn't have any huge hits then, but they were well known in the rock FM genre. They were really popular with the new genre of FM and that new style of radio. You didn't necessarily have to have a hit record.

So we got up there, I was probably 30 feet from the front, right in the front row of The Fillmore. You can imagine the impact, sitting on the floor looking up at these guys. They did a song called 'A Quick One While He's Away' which was about seven or eight minutes long, maybe a bit longer. It was a little mini-story so it was like the pre-cursor to the rock opera and that inspired the hell out of us. It inspired me. In the book, it talks about Larry being the inspiration for the theatrics and all that was in People!'s stage act. That's completely false. There is not one shred of truth in that and I can give you the details, but not now.

Anyway, I was taken by this little story in 'A Quick One While He's Away' and I thought what if we did something like that? That would really be different. I think I talked to my brother about it and I talked to Denny and Denny was a writer. I'm not sure who came up with the idea of knights in shining armour type thing and the dragon and all that. I'll talk to Denny because he and I and my brother too, but more Denny, we were the originators of the idea. We knew that Larry was a writer, we didn't know how accomplished, but we knew he could write and we had a few songs of his already that he had written that we liked. So he was brought in on it and I was pretty much the arranger of the songs and gave some of the directional ideas of the genre. They wrote the songs, except for the opening song, which I did not get credit and in that book Denny doesn't get credit at all and he was the co-writer on the whole 'The Epic', except for the opening where the music was mine and the lyrics were Larry's and Denny's.

That's how we kicked it off. I had the music or I came up with the musical idea because I was into classical music, and it has a kind of baroque feel to it on the guitar. That's how 'The Epic' developed and that's one side of the album and then I think we had in those days five songs on the other side. Everybody contributed; I think Albert had one song and then we had 'I Love You' and 'A Whole Lot More Jesus' so that cut out two originals. So everyone contributed. The idea that nobody else wrote music is what it pretty much says in that chapter.

Tony: It implies that, doesn't it?

Geoff: He implies underhandedly that we wanted the B-side as a single because we wanted the money and the song that was on the B-side of the single 'I Love You' was 'Somebody Tell Me My Name' which Denny and I wrote. The fact is, I was so clueless I didn't even really think in terms that we'd make any money from that. We wrote that song because I was inspired by earlier songs 'What Have They Done With The Rain'. All of the Cold War fears, I wanted to say something that had significance. I was affected by, I think, The Weavers and the song they did that was really talking about war and the insanity of it all. So that's what the B-side was and it never made it to the album because there wasn't enough room. When you listen to that song, 'Somebody Tell Me My Name', it's influenced by some of The Beatles music, it changes tempos drastically, it's a little bit longer than a normal song so it never made it on there. So there was a great deal of collaboration.

Tony: I understand Cathy Stashuk (described in The Best Of People's Vol 1 Songbook With Lyrics And Notes as "Larry's photographer, visionary and muse") gave The Zombies' record to Larry and asked whether, as a favour, the band would play it.

Geoff: I was always looking for new material. I didn't feel we were that good as writers. When we heard that song we were like yeah! We loved The Zombies, that was the first thing. And the song totally made sense for our group. But I'm sure it was a fan who had heard the B side of the A side of The Zombies' song, whichever it was, and said you guys should listen to this song. And we did and we said let's do it. We were already with Capitol and they came to see us at the What's It Club with two A&R guys, one of them being Don Grierson who was then a major A&R guy for Capitol, and who incidentally is helping us on our new album. Don was one of the guys that said 'You should do that song on your album. We think that song should be your next single.' Once Capitol committed, they really committed. They believed in it; 'I Love You' was an odd song. We were already performing it, so it was a great way for them to hear it live and they knew it sounded good and the rest is history in terms of that was the single that broke us. In those days, if we didn't have a hit single after several single releases I don't know if we would have done an album.

Tony: Tell me about the song, "A Whole Lot More Jesus, A Lot Less Rock and Roll."

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Reader Comments

Posted by Charles Norman in Oslo, Norway @ 17:24 on Dec 23 2018

So much rubbish being said here. Geoff, can't you get your stories straight? My reply is too long to fit in this box, but if you'd like to see a rebuttal with actual proof instead of conjecture, check this page at the Larry Norman web site:

https://www.thesolidrockshop.com/peoplealbum.html

Merry Christmas everyone!



Posted by Barry Newman @ 03:20 on Dec 21 2018

Larry Norman did not tell the truth about a lot of things. I think a lot of people owe the guy who did that documentary an apology. He nailed it.



Posted by Jeffrey in BC @ 18:37 on Dec 19 2018

Good little interview. I appreciate this point of view.

I feel like Thornbury's book could have had the subtitle, "As told by access to Larry Norman's personal archives." The members of People aren't the only people in the book who didn't get interviews. It simply isn't a journalistic book; it's more like a devotional/hagiography.

I hope more people are willing to tell their story if they feel misrepresented by the book.



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