After years of
waiting, here's an album's worth of music by one of
the psychedelic era's best loved groups: The
Misunderstood. It's a collection of material that
they recorded between 1965 and early 1967, when due
to a variety of evils they were forced to
disband. The Misunderstood's story
begins in Riverside, California in late 1963 when
three teenagers, Greg Treadway (guitar/keyboards),
Rick Moe (drums) and George Phelps (lead guitar),
bitten by the surf music bug, decided to form their
own group, the Blue Notes. As Greg Treadway
recalls: 'Surf music was the thing along with a
little rock'n' roll, our blue hair, blue guitars
and blue shoes,. Oh yes! they were soon joined by
Rick Brown on lead vocals harmonica and in early
1965 by Steve Whiting who obligingly switched from
guitar to bass to complete the line up. They
changed their name to The Misunderstood and
embarked upon the usual rounds of rooftop parties,
battle of the bands and armory dances. Shortly
after Whiting joined they went into the local
William Locy` studios to cut a 6 track acetate of
material, which though self penned, owed much to
the English r'n'b groups of the time, particularly
to the likes of the Yardbirds, Animals etc.
Although musically still finding their feet, the
results showed what a powerful singer Rick Brown
was developing into and that they were a fair match
for the hundreds of other garage bands breaking out
across the country. Phelps left soon after to play
in a succession of other Riverside bands until his
death in the late 1970's. His replacement was Glenn
Ross Campbell on steel guitar. Campbell's background had
more than its fair share of mystery: his mother was
some kind of mystic whilst he himself had spent his
early years in England. He couldn't and still
cannot play orthodox guitar: at the tender age of
two he had been given a plastic guitar but instead
of learning to play it in the normal way, had begun
to scrape cutlery and other steel objects up and
down its strings. He eventually progressed to steel
guitar and by 1962 had become proficient enough to
join another Riverside combo, the Goldtones, a
surfing group, in time to feature on their powerful
local hit 'Gutterball' which was stamped with his
unique sound. Having recruited Glenn, The
Misunderstood went back into the studios to cut two
blues numbers as a single, Jimmy Reed's You Don't
Have to Go' and Howlin' Wolf's 'Who's Been Talkin',
good performances. but little to make them stand
out from the crowd! It was at this point that
fate lent a hand in the shape of John Peel
Ravencroft, an Englishman masquerading as disc
jockey come Beatles expert who had by chance landed
in San Bernadino after a stint on a radio station
in Oklahoma. Ravencroft quickly became involved in
the local scene and became mates with two other
Riverside bands, the Mystics and the North Side
Moss. Ravenscroft: 'I used to go to local gigs and
one day the Mystics and the North Side Moss had a
gig playing the opening of a new shopping centre in
Riverside. Well the Mystics did their set but just
before the North Side Moss were due to go on, there
was this band that nobody had heard of who had also
been booked. So I was planning to go and have a
wander round the shopping centre while they were
playing....but as I was about to drift off, I saw
this group taking the stage and starting to tune up
and they looked very weird and freaky so I decided
to hang around and to see if they were any good.
They called themselves, it transpired, The
Misunderstood...well it was like one of your St.
Paul on the road to Damascus experiences, it was
stunning. They cut both the North Side Moss and the
Mystics to pieces, they really did! Glenn Campbell
looked incredibly thin and ill, with exceptionally
long hair for those days and he was hunched over
his steel guitar, playing the most unbelievable
stuff I'd ever heard...and Steve Whiting was doing
things like playing his bass with a bottleneck:
they were quite fantastic.' Ravenscroft was hooked and
began to act as the group's mentor, giving them
encouragement and getting them the occasional
bookings. Early in 1966 he took them into
Hollywood's Gold Star Studios: to cut another
acetate. Though still blues based, they were
re-arranging the songs so drastically that they
sounded like nothing else on earth! The metal
acetate of these sessions consisted of wild, hard
rock versions of such chestnuts as 'Shake Your
Money Maker', 'Smokestack Lightning' and an epic
version of the Yardbirds' 'I'm Not Talkin', which
took up the whole of side two complete with
feedback passages and Eastern style raga steel
guitar: at one point the whole group trouped out of
the studio into the passage-way outside, leaving
all their equipment whining with feedback before
returning to finish the number off! That sort of
thing became common place two years later but in
early 1966 it was mindblowingly different. At one
of their sporadic live appearances during this
period, at a place called Pandora's Box in Los
Angeles they completely freaked the audience out
with their cyclical feedback effects, leaving the
stage whilst their instruments fed back every few
seconds., It was so stunning that even the barman
closed the bar so that he could watch! Realizing that they
wouldn't get anywhere based in Riverside
(California's equivalent of Lytham St. Annes), and
at their mentor's suggestion, they decided to head
for London in June 1966 in an attempt to make it!
It was the turning point in their career in more
ways than one: an army draft medical claimed Rick
Brown just before they were due to fly out but
undeterred the other four duly arrived in London.
Greg Treadway takes up the story: 'John told us
that his mom would be expecting us and that we
could stay at her flat until we were settled. In
fact she knew nothing about it. We stood in front
of her flat for eight hours with with all our
equipment whilst she called John back in the states
to fine out 'what these four long hairs were doing
outside'. But this was just the start of their
troubles. Rick finally managed to make it over but
in the meantime Greg was called up and returned
home to be drafted into the Navy. A young guy, Tony
Hill from South Shields replaced him. Life was no bed of roses:
the group survived on a hand to mouth basis
stealing 50lb bags of rotting chips that chipshops
would leave out on the pavements for collection by
the dustbin men each morning, or whatever they
could beg of appropriate. It was a crazy period
with Glenn becoming addicted to scrumpy cider
shilst Rick succumbed to the softer euphoriants of
London's blossoming drug culture. It was a miracle
that they managed to produce any music at all but
thankfully through Ravenscroft's brother Alan they
got a deal with Fontana Records. Under the
supervision of producer Dick Leahy and engineer
Roger, they went into the studio. According to
Glenn: 'those two people believed in us and put
their jobs on the line, only to receive less for
their efforts than we did.' Thus at the peak of
their powers, The Misunderstood recorded six songs
(the whole of side one of this LP) which not only
caught the mood of a changing era in pop music but
more importantly were some of the most exciting,
original and timeless pieces of music of all, Two
of the songs, 'I Can Take You To The Sun' b/w 'Who
Do You Love?' were released as a debut single. They
played a reception in front of the press at
Fontana's headquarters in Stanhope Place which
quickly became the talk of the capital's music
circles. Starting with 'My Mind', the group took
off on an extended piece which they called 'The
Trip (to Innerspace)', Glenn getting all kinds of
Cape Canaveral sounds from his guitar whilst Rick
intoned instructions on how to explore the inner
psyche into his microphone, before they came back
to earth with 'Children Of The Sun' (their
psychedelic homage to the Yardbirds' 'Shapes Of
Things') and finally glided to a soft climax with
the perfect 'I Can Take You To The Sun', Tony and
Rick sitting cross legged on the floor. Soon the word was
out and their appearance at the Marquee
Club the following week drew such
luminaries as the Pink Floyd, and the Move
who, weren't slow to steal a few ideas
from The Misunderstood's stage show for
their own. Yet if musically they were at a
creative zenith, managerially and socially
things were falling apart. Having shaken
off one dodgy manager, it was decided that
Rick should return briefly to California
to deal with his draft problems whilst
Glenn, Steve and Rick Moe should go off to
Europe to sort out their British visas and
work permits. And that was basically the
end of The Misunderstood. Rick was
momentarily drafted but found army life
traumatic, tripping on LSD whilst being
terrorized by overly aggressive drill
sergeants who forced him to crawl under
live machine gun fire and race through
clouds of poison gas. Eventually he got
smuggled off the army base and a few days
later found himself amidst the flower
children of Haight Ashbury. But there was
no solace for him there either and hounded
by the authorities Rick suddenly
reappeared in England to momentarily share
a flat with Jeff Beck before the FBI got
wind of this too. Meanwhile the others,
after spending three days being ferried
back and forth between Dover and Calais,
were allowed back into England, had their
permits revoked and were deported. So one
of the most exciting bands of all time had
its heart and soul torn out and we'll
never know now whether after all that
early promise, they would have scaled the
same dizzy heights of success accorded to
such contemporaries as Hendrix and the
Pink Floyd, aspect of whose sound they
predated by several months. By any standards The
Misunderstood were a remarkable group. The music on
this record should be taken in the same spirit as
it was intended back in the mid sixties, five young
men exploring their music and themselves. As John
Peel once called them: 'prophets of a new order'.
After their passing the flood gates burst open and
every group in the land was playing music of a
'progressive' nature. Turn up the first side of
this LP and remember them the way they were, as
pioneers. ---Nigel Cross, London,. 1982.
Personnel: Influences: Setlist
Sample: Equipment:
Rehearsal
Space: Band
Vehicles: Fashion
Statement: Best
Gig: Gig
from
Hell!: Last
Gig: Pre-London
Misunderstood
Information contributed
by Rick Brown rsb@agt-gems.com
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