Posted on 10/21/2009 10:17:08 PM PDT by My Favorite Headache
Rush drummer and Blue Cheer fan Neil Peart wrote the following in memory of singer/bassist Dickie Peterson, who died after a battle with liver cancer on October 12th:
In the summer of 1968, I was going on 16, living in a small Canadian city (St. Catharines, Ontario), and had been playing drums for a couple of years. I owned a small set of Rogers drums, a plastic AM radio that I played along to, a tiny mono record player, and 12 LPs. On the bookshelf in my room, facing my drums, I stacked those LPs with the covers facing outward, rotating different ones to the front.
Both fans and haters of my future work with Rush would find those LPs telling, and nod their heads or roll their eyes accordingly: The Who’s My Generation, Happy Jack and The Who Sell Out; Are You Experienced? and Axis: Bold as Love by the Jimi Hendrix Experience; the Grateful Dead’s and Moby Grape’s eponymous debuts; Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow; Fresh Cream and Disraeli Gears; the first album by Traffic (called Reaping, in a Canadian-only variation, the cover showing the band posing on a Massey Ferguson combine); and Vincebus Eruptum, the first album by “the world’s loudest band,” Blue Cheer.
Tiny articles in early rock magazines said Blue Cheer were so loud they had to record outdoors — part of their second album, Outsideinside, was recorded on a San Francisco pier — and the drummer, Paul Whaley, played so hard he had to wear golf gloves. Blue Cheer had a fortress of amplifiers, cannonades of drums, forests of hair, were managed by a former Hells Angel named Gut (who described the band’s sound as: “They turn the air into cottage cheese”), and they were hated by grownups and rock critics alike. Of course I loved them!
Blue Cheer’s version of “Summertime Blues” was a good-sized hit that summer of 1968, and their two albums that year, Vincebus Eruptum and Outsideinside, galvanized my friends and me. When TV Guide listed Blue Cheer as guests on Steve Allen’s late-night TV show, I was wildly excited (rock bands on TV were rare in those days). I tuned in to watch what I remember as a comical period-piece: Steve Allen, in his black suit and tie, thick-rimmed glasses, and Brylcreemed hairdo, sitting at his desk and saying something like, “the loud noise you are hearing is just the hum of their amplifiers.” Then, “Blue Cheer — run for your lives!”
Cut to a wall of Marshalls, a massive set of Rogers drums, and three long-haired guys crashing into “Summertime Blues.” I had our family TV turned down low, trying not to disturb Mom and Dad, but the speaker was still overwhelmed with static and distortion. Drummer Paul Whaley thrashed at the cymbals with both arms, Leigh Stephens was a dark-haired menace grinding out thick guitar riffs, and Dickie Peterson wailed through a pyramid of blond hair with his bass guitar hanging low.
I loved those first two Blue Cheer albums, and even the third, New! Improved!, though it was a major departure (not as loud). In 2004, my bandmates and I celebrated our thirtieth anniversary by recording an album of covers, Feedback, to pay tribute to our early influences. We combined the Who’s and Blue Cheer’s versions of “Summertime Blues,” and ended with me playing the innovative drum pattern from Blue Cheer’s “Just a Little Bit,” from Outsideinside, which I had never forgotten.
So Blue Cheer made an enduring impression on this once-young drummer, and definitely played their part in shaping Rush’s beginnings — a loud power trio with a fortress of amps, cannonades of drums, and a bass player’s high voice trying to pierce the darkness. That would be my bandmate Geddy, who remarked that Blue Cheer might well have been the first heavy metal band.
Dickie Peterson was present at the creation — stood at the roaring heart of the creation, a primal scream through wild hair, bass hung low, in an aural apocalypse of defiant energy. His music left deafening echoes in a thousand other bands in the following decades, thrilling some, angering others, and disturbing everything — like art is supposed to do.
A later anthology of Blue Cheer songs was hilariously titled Louder Than God, and whatever your beliefs, it is certain that death, alas, is louder than God. Given a little ironic licence, perhaps it becomes a fitting epitaph for Dickie Peterson.
Because it sure would look cool chiseled in granite . . .
RIP, Dickie.
Thanks...I do remember.
'Outsideinside' - Blue Cheer
Good job Neil.
I think I will put on “Rush in Rio” for my lullaby tonight.
bump
By the way, thanks for posting this. Neil Peart did a great job with that tribute. We are about the same age, and I always enjoy hearing/reading somebody else reminiscing the same reminiscences as me.
(Uhh... if that makes any sense.)
Anyway, those (late ‘60s) were some incredible times.
Of course, I happen to be a Rush fan as well. But Neal is talking “loud”? I saw Rush and Kiss open for Blue Oyster Cult in a field house at Bucknell circa 1975 and my ears throbbed for a week. Loudest concert I ever saw, and I saw Black Sabbath at the Spectrum twice (in ‘70 and ‘71).
FRegards,
LH
Since then, it’s a tragedy that the “powers that be” in the recording industry decided to collectively KILL REAL MUSIC. On a positive note, I’ll ignore anything produced after the 80’s and go out and find myself Vincebus Eruptum and Outsideinside. If Neil Peart says it’s good, it’s good.
Ping for later
Who would buy their garbage, if they had a choice?
It's not music anymore, it's low level pedophilia porn.
I've seen 'em all: Hendrix (twice), Zeppelin, Vanilla Fudge . . . but the loudest band EVER (not even close) was Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. They were ear-splittingly loud.
Loudest band I saw was Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. And I saw a weird double bill with Sabbath and Yes, and didn’t think Sabbath was that loud.
Summertime Blues is on my Highs of the Sixties album. I still turn it up butt...
The loudest band I ever saw was The Georgia Satellites.
I always thought MC5 was the first heavy metal band.
the loudest band I ever saw was the L.A. art-punkabilly band X. They came to my town with the Rollins Band a few years ago. On second thought, maybe it was the Rollins Band that was the loudest. It was all a blur that night.
The years have flown by.
Anyone with a serious knowledge of hard rock and heavy metal knows that Blue Cheer was the first and the original real deal of metal.
It’s funny reading people’s memories of what their loudest concerts were...odd to see Yes/Sabbath, Rick Derringer, and CSNY mentioned here. Sabbath I could buy being loud but the others are a bit of an eye opener.
Saying that...I think the loudest concert I ever attended was Pantera and Skid Row. I have been to hundreds of concerts and I still stand by today as that show being the single loudest 2 band event I have ever heard in my life. I am not kidding. I did not have my hearing back for 3 plus days. I used to think people were b.s.’ing me when they would talk about shows they couldn’t hear after for days. I would usually get my ears back the next morning or so if a concert was really super loud.
But that combo of Pantera and Skid Row was just off the charts LOUD.
Wow, I LOVED Bloodrock, and our little band played at least 3-4 Bloodrock songs, particularly “Kool Aid Kids” I think they had a song called “DOA.”
Only one other group I can think of might have an argument:
(I still go with Blue Cheer, though.)
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