Bluestone Union I:
Like millions of other teens and pre-teens, Wally's first band was influenced by The Beatles appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. An estimated 73 million viewers, watched The Beatles perform 'All My Loving', 'Till There Was You', 'She Loves You', 'I Saw Her Standing There' and 'I Want To Hold Your Hand'.
Wally: Sunday, 8–9PM est, February 9, 1964: The Night That Changed My Life!
"I was so taken by The Beatles first TV performance on The Ed Sullivan show, that my 11 year old brain said, "I want to do that!!! I wanted to play guitar and sing.
With the family placed around the black & white TV set, intro by Ed, then there "they" were. Unlike anything I had ever seen before or since!
A minute into 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' and my father, put off by their hair styles, declared, "they can't even sing." I knew he hated them and that made me like them even more. Pre-teen revolution had also arrived."
In South Euclid, Ohio - Shortly after that performance, neighborhood friends and St. Margaret Mary classmates, Bill Brown (7th grade) of Glenside Rd.; Wally (6th grade) and his brother Fred Gunn (5th grade) of Clinton Avenue and Brian Rasmussen (5th grade) also of Glenside Rd., in South Euclid, began mimicking The Beatles, using brooms for guitars and an old family mandolin. In Wally and Fred's living room, Wally said, "We would play the records on my parents Curtis-Mathis stereo console and sing along, pretending to play our fake guitars. I remember an amusing moment, when we were singing, 'Please Mr. Postman,' when the mailman walked up to our mailbox, in-view, outside the picture window!"
They put on a Beatles show in Wally's garage that summer. Wally, during a visit to The New York Worlds Fair in June, purchased a large Beatles poster. It had a photograph of the Beatles against a door and blue painted brick wall. Below the photo was the words, "The Beatles Live at The Palladium with Wally Gunn". One could have their name imprinted into to the blank space for a fee! Wally hung the poster on his garage door. As neighborhood friends came by, they would see the poster and ask, if Wally really knew The Beatles? This gave him the idea to put on a Beatles show in the garage.
Bill had made a good copy of John Lennon's Rickenbaker 325 Capri guitar out of scrap wood and plexiglas. The others followed his lead and made guitar copies also, although not quite as accurate. So, Bill played John Lennon, his favorite Beatle; Fred was Paul, since he was left handed; Wally became George and bought real cuban heeled boots from Flagg Brothers Shoes and Brian played Ringo with an assortment of large metal cans and lids for cymbals. Wally's Mom, Lenore, made them wigs and they turned up the collars on their suit jackets, for the collar-less look. Bill's dad, Leo, made them two copper pipe, mic stands to sing into. They were assisted by neighbor, Ken Consolo, who ran the record player behind a curtain, during their show. They charged a nickel a seat, filled the garage and even had standing room only. For extra money they also sold popcorn and Kool Aid during the performance. Later that year, on Christmas Day of 1964, they were paid $5 each to perform in the basement for neighbor, Grace Meyer's Christmas party. Their first professional gig!
In their early teens, Bill, Wally and Ken later got serious about learning to play real instruments. Bill learned guitar after numerous piano lessons, Ken Consolo took up guitar and Wally switched from guitar to drums. They played first in Bill's upstairs attic-style bedroom and his garage. They started rotating from the attic space to the basements and garages of all three residences, to give their parents a few weeks break!
Instrument notes: Wally - "The other guys got pretty good at guitar and bought electric ones, in the summer of 1965. I had a cheap acoustic guitar and I worked all summer cutting lawns, in 1964, to buy it for $30. It turned out to be a bad guitar. The action was too high and I was not progressing as fast as the other guys. My guitar teacher could not even play it! Frustrated, I started keeping beat on a large potato chip can with a pull chain on top for snares. I think I used wooden spoon handles for sticks at first. A short time later Bill's neighbor let me borrow a real, grey pearl, Ludwig snare drum. I bought a Sears blue sparkle snare drum later. It had a cheap cymbal attached to the stand. I used the Ludwig for snare and the Sears without snares for the bass drum parts. A friend of Ken's left his blue sparkle Premiere kit in Ken's basement, so I started playing that for a month. I was looking at the P.D. classified ads every morning for a full drum set and saving my money to buy one.
I had asked both my parents for permission to buy a full drum kit, if I could save enough money for one. I guess they thought I could never afford one and agreed. Well my friend, Flavian knew a guy with a kit for sale and we went to see it. He wanted $100 for it and I had the money saved. That evening my mother was in the kitchen cooking dinner, when my Dad came in the back door, I hit them up right away. "I found a drum set and I have the money!!!" They just looked at each other like OH NO! Then my father started begging me not to buy the drums. I reminded them that they had previously given me permission. My Dad then offered to buy a keyboard and pay for lessons, if I would not buy the drums. I didn't want to play keyboards. All the guys in bands 'I liked' played drums or guitars! Since they gave their word, they reluctantly said OK.
A few days later, for $100, I bought a Lyra drum set from my friend's friend. It was Italy's version of a Ludwig, White Marine Pearl, Ringo style set. 14" snare drum; 13" mounted tom; 16" floor tom and a 22" bass drum. 14" high hat cymbals and stand and a shell mounted 22" Zildjian Ride cymbal. I'm sure I tortured my parents. Every day after school, I would go into the basement and play to records. I got one verbal lesson on the kit from a friend who played. He said, you just play 1-2-3-4 on the bass drum. Play 1 and 3 on the snare drum and hi-hat. Then play 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4 on the cymbal all at the same time. Everything else is more or less beats, in that framework. I just tried to teach myself from then on and only took lessons for a few months, seven years later.
Ken Consolo went from a beginner, no-name acoustic guitar, purchased with lessons from Rom Guzzo's Music, at Golden Gate Plaza, in Mayfield Hts, Ohio, to a burgundy metal flake and white, Sears Silvertone solid body guitar. The Silvertones were Danelectro made, with a Masonite body, lipstick pickups and an amp built into the guitar case. A few years later he bought a Epiphone Riviera guitar and a Fender or Vox amp.
Bill's first electric guitar was from a Montgomery Ward catalog. It was a light brown wood grain, semi-hollow body, double cutaway with a Bigsby-style tail piece. I believe it was a 60's Airline Barney Kessel featuring two "Kleenex Box" pickups. Later, he purchased the biggest Heath Kit amplifier kit available. The TA-17, 120 watt amp and TA-17-1, two-way speaker kit. With help from his father, it took, what seemed like an eternity, to build. Bill's father also drove us to the west side and we bought two Shure microphones from Difiores Music, on Lorain Rd and West 133rd St. We then hit the basement with a record player, records and learned as many songs as we could.
In 1968, the band was named The Post Mortem (Latin for "After Death") by Bill Brown. TIm Sullivan of Cleveland Heights, Ohio was a friend and classmate of Bill's. He played Vox Continental Organ and agreed to join the band. Tim didn't really want to be in a band and after a few rehearsals and one live date decided not to continue. Wally wanted to change the name of the group to reflect their roots, location, Ohio, something more in line with reality, not death.
He was very influenced by the local band, Cyrus Erie, (later most became The Raspberries). He first saw them at a Cathedral Latin High School dance with Bill. Their name was derived from Bucyrus Erie, an Ohio farm equipment company. Like Buffalo Springfield, another band name from a farm equipment company, he wanted a name something like that. Other names on the list were: Gordian Knot; The Brown Gunn; Bridgewater Trust; Bluestones; Bluestone Rush; Berkshire Trust; County Line; Will's Fargo; Hudson Runners and Stonehaven, amongst others. Bluestone Union came out on top and related to the members location.
So, the original Bluestone Union was a neighborhood garage/basement band. Wally named the band after the street in South Euclid that connected his street, Clinton Avenue with Glenside Rd. The two streets where the band members lived.
Wally had won an art contest announced by the Cleveland newspaper, The Plain Dealer. Jane Scott, the local rock journalist for the paper, called Wally to inform him that he had won first place in "The Iron Butterfly Art Contest." First prize was two "nose bleed" tickets to see Iron Butterfly, Blood Sweat and Tears and Tim Buckley at Cleveland Public Hall. They had asked for submissions of what readers thought an "Iron Butterfly" would look like.
When Jane Scott asked Wally what school he attended and what his hobbies were, he said St. Joes and I play drums in a band. "What band," asked Jane? Wally blurted out Bluestone Union! After he hung up he realized he just changed the band's name without the other guys approval. He then called them to let them in on the change and why. They were OK with it, but the group soon dissolved, as each member went their separate ways. Bill, the oldest member, left to go the Kent State University, in 1969. He joined a rock/country band, as a bass guitarist, during his freshman year there.
Wally hooked-up with classmates at St. Joseph High School. They were all from the Euclid, Willoughby and Mentor, Ohio area. They had a band originally called, The Renegade Blues Band.
Coming up: Part Three - The Renegade
