4 / Dave Heenan Set (1967 - about 8 months):
- Hank Aberle (guitar)
- Alan Lax (bass)
- Dave Heenan (vocals)
- Gary Reems (drums)
single: "Alice In Wonderland" / "So Many Roads" ( 1967, Electra [Epic] )
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x87bgij
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x87bgj6
Password - "kossoff 1963"
5 / The Glitterhouse
- Hank Aberle (guitar, harmonica, vocals)
- Moogy Klingman (keyboards, vocals)
- Al Lax (bass, vocals)
- Mike Gayle (lead guitar, vocals)
- Joel O'Brien (1943 - 2004) - drums vocals
single: "Tinkerbell's Mind" / "I Lost Me A Friend" (1968, DynoVoice, DY-925), "Barbarella" / "Love Drags Me Down" (1968, DynoVoice, DY-927)
LP: "Barbarella (soundtrack of the film)" - 1968, DynoVoice, DY-31908, three recordings by the band - "Love, Love, Love Drags Me Down", "Barbarella", "I Love All The Love In You"
LP: "Color Blind" (1968, DynoVoice, DY - 31905)
LP (compilation released on CD in 2002): "The Almost Complete Recordings 1966 to 1974"
https://kossoff1963progandpsychrock.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-glitterhouse-us-color-blind-1968.html
"True Story" - Hank Aberle
Hank Aberle (guitar) attended M & A (High School of Music and Art) located in Manhattan. Notable for graduates like Laura Nyro, Janis Ian, Felix Pappalardi, Elliot Randall, Bela Fleck and others who went on to some notoriety in music. Renee Fladen also was a student and was the focus of Steve Martin Caro who wrote the song Walk Away Rene for The Left Banke. The school was specialized for young students that had real talent and wanted make-it in the music industry.
Alan Lax (bass) although two years older than Hank lived nearby and the two would skip school and go play pool downtown and hang out at The Gaslight in witness to Tom Paxton, Bill Cosby, Ed McCurdy and others. Hank and Al decided to play electric guitars and form a surf band with a couple other guys and called themselves The Outsiders (no relation to the band from Ohio with the hit song (Time Won’t Let Me). They played various coffee houses and folk venues in Greenwich Village.
One evening The Outsiders were playing a high school party up on the West Side of New York and met Mike Gayle. He was a black man who played guitar and was a prolific song writer. Mike sat in with Hank and Al and they seemed to fit well together. He shared an apartment with Bob Gruen who was just beginning to gain interest in Photography. Bob became famous later in his career for candid pictures of well-known music personalities specifically Bob Dylan and John Lennon. The trio started rehearsing there at the apartment. They hired Tom Weiner on (drums) but because of the noise ordinance decided to move to Great Neck for practices in the basement of Toms parents’ house. Renaming themselves as The Justice League they played high school parties and teen clubs in the Great Neck area.
A steady fan following occurred and they decided to hire a manager Alan Nevins who got them gigs and drove them around to the various venues in The Village. Another Great Neck musician (Mark “Moogy” Klingman) was a young keyboard player. He had attended the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 when he was only 15 and met Bob Dylan after his famous “going electric” thing on stage. He was in a band called The Living Few and at 16 had a one-night stand playing with Jimmy James and the Flames starring Jimi Hendrix and Randy California (later a guitarist who formed the band Spirit). Moogy had attended many Pop Art gigs and was determined to become a member. He started out as the Justice Leagues “roadie”.
After a while Tom Weiner departed and was replaced by Gary Reems on (drums). Gary was well into abstract paintings and art and did some work with AD Reinhardt and his Black Paintings. Gary offered up a new name for the band calling them Pop Art. They hired Bob Slater to manage the band and were booked through Premiere Talent Agency owned by Frank Barsalona. Frank started with Pop Art but was later involved with booking Herman’s Hermits, The Who, The Rolling Stones and others in the USA. Soon Moogy was on stage with the band playing his Hammond B3 organ.
Bob’s brother Alvin Slater worked for Columbia Records and got them some recording time for a single. Recorded at CBS Studios it was released on Epic Records and called (Rumpelstiltskin / Ode to an Unknown Girl). The single got some moderate airplay on local radio WMCA. They played the Village clubs, (Café’ Au Go Go, The Night Owl, The Bitter End) and became the house band for both The Rolling Stone and The Eighth Wonder. The single got some notice and they were a featured band to play the song Rumpelstiltskin on Upbeat, a syndicated TV show out of Cleveland, Ohio. The band had a one week stay at Cleveland’s top dance club Otto’s Grotto. About 2 1/2 years together and Pop Art was pretty much done as a band. Mike Gayle and Moogy Klingman both left the band.
Continuing on Hank, Al and Gary hired Dave Heenan to replace Mike Gayle on vocals and this band was called the Dave Heenan Set. They recorded a single (Alice In Wonderland / So Many Roads) on Electra and stayed together for about 8 months before firing Dave and reuniting with Mike and Moogy again.
Hank : " ...Dave Heenan is a very complex, strange but lovable human being. When he first fronted the group, I could never understand a word he said because of his thick Newcastle accent. He grew up with Eric Burdon and Ringo Starr and had an outgoing, extroverted personality. Perfect for a lead singer who fancied himself as an English James Brown. We once opened at a large venue in Newport RI for his old schoolmate Eric Burdon and War. After leaving the music biz, he became a cruise ship comedian and I think he’s retired now, living in NYC. ... "
"...single made by the Dave Heenan Set as being on Elektra but it was actually on Epic like the other we made as The Pop Art ... "
So the new (old) band included Moogy Klingman (keyboards, vocals), Al Lax (bass, vocals) and Hank Aberle (guitar, harmonica, vocals), Mike Gayle (lead guitar, lead vocals) and they hired a friend of Moogy’s, Joel O'Brien on (drums, vocals) who was formerly with The Flying Machine starring James Taylor. Joel’s friends just called him Bishop.
Moogy was a big movie buff at the time and he suggested that the band now should be called The Amazing Dr. Glitterhouse which was in reference to a 1938 movie starring Edward G Robinson called The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse. I’m sure Clitterhouse would not have been too well accepted even during the “daze” of free love and sex. Sounds too much like a house of “blue lights”. So, they shortened the name to The Glitterhouse and the new band was born.
They didn’t play any clubs of note but practiced for a few months getting their sound just right. Mike Gayle was coming into his own as a song writer, he could write 10 songs in a week, and with Joel's drumming the band had potential to be a hit making machine.
They were hired to play a book publication party via Moogy’s Dad. He worked for the publishing company and the release of The Birds of Britain. This was John Green’s book exploiting all the Hot models and actresses in 1960’s Britain. The cover picture was of Patty Boyd (George Harrisons wife at the time and Eric Clapton’s wife later on). Others pictured in the coffee table book were Twiggy, Diana Rigg (Emma Peel in The Avenger’s), Honor Blackman (Pussy Galore in Goldfinger), Julie Christie and others). Bob Crewe was a top song hit maker and production genius at the time. He happened to be in attendance, heard the band and was inspired to hire them at $500 a week. There was no formal contract, apparently this was just a handshake deal.
Bob got them into rehearsals at A & R Studios located at 322 48th St in New York. Roy Cicala and Shelly Yakus who worked with The Four Seasons and all their hits engineered the sessions. Bob began to focus on the band and dedicated himself to the production of the album adding his own vocals and studio embellishments wherever he felt they were needed. Bob really had big plans and thoughts of many potential hits.
During the process they also had a choice to do a soundtrack recording for either a movie called Greetings (starring an unknown newcomer Robert De Niro) or a movie called Barbarella. They choose Barbarella because of Dino Delaurenti’s involvement (he was a well-known director) and the main star (Jane Fonda). The movie was to be a guaranteed hit. They recorded some songs (voice only and harmonica by Hank). Bob Crewe’s thought was to give the public a taste of Glitterhouse through the movie and then hit the public with a full LPs worth of tunes. The band showed up for the premiere of Barbarella in a Limousine at The Murry Hill Theatre on Lexington Ave. It was a big thing to meet Dino DeLaurenti in person. But things didn’t work out as planned. The movie kind of bombed, no single was released for the movie and the Barbarella album didn't sell well enough to give the band any focus. When the Glitterhouse album called Colorblind was finally released, the single (Tinkerbell's Mind) was chosen as the hot song and although it had interest in New York it died everywhere else. Then Bob Crewe put all his focus on other projects, the album was not promoted, and the band was dismissed. This was the usual empty promises made and visions of grandeur unfulfilled by record company moguls.
The Glitterhouse’s last gig together was before the album was recorded at the party where Bob Crew took them under his wing. Under wraps for a year without sight or sound, the public really never saw Glitterhouse live as a band. The album went directly to the cut-out bins and they broke up.
The LP is full of psychedelic decoration courtesy of Bob Crewe toying with the songs. Still there are some real pop-psych gems found in the grooves with three-part harmonies and hooks galore. Some compare the sound to The Band and The Rascals in their later days of progressive experimentation. It seems they would have been the perfect band for Paul Rothchild and Elektra Records who were signing other different acts like Ars Nova, Earth Opera, The Doors and Renaissance.
Hank : " ...Before Moogy passed, we produced some bootlegs of additional working demos for the tunes plus extra never released songs recorded after the group break up at Todd Rundgren’s studio called Secret Sound. ... "
Mike Gayle moved on to other music endeavors. Al Lax quit the music business and built furniture for a living. He moved to Mongolia, learned the language and marketed furniture through an Import/ Export business there. When he came back to the US, he became a successful Stockbroker. Joel O'Brien went back to playing with James Taylor, joined the band Jo Mama and played with Carole King’s backup band before retiring to Woodstock and becoming an artist. Unfortunately, he passed away in 2004. There currently is an elaborate website featuring his biography, music, paintings and pictures.
Moogy Klingman helped to form Todd Rundgren’s Utopia and played on several Todd and Utopia LP releases. He also recorded two albums under his own name and had a successful career in music up until November 2011 when he passed away from cancer.
Hank Aberle started building classical guitars and gave classical guitar lessons. For income stability he got into sound production and worked for Gotham Recording Studios. Eventually he opened his own sound production company called Aberle Sound where they do voice overs, commercial work and help Internationally with voice or sound audio. The company is still active as of this writing.
Hank : "...We got together for the last time in 2002 and had an informal jam session which a CD-R of Michael Gayle songs called "Naked Songs" was produced. They were supposed to be expanded at some later date but sadly, it never went any further than a rough vocal sketch of one of the tunes done by me. There's a photo of the get-together somewhere ... " .
Many thanks to Hank Aberle for the photos, information and a lot of work into this publication.
