LITMIR.BIZ

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of a single. I was the only bass player in Brooklyn they knew and despite my insistence that I would not join them on a permanent basis I agreed to the session. There was only one problem; it was a Tuesday night, which wasn’t my night off at the Granite. The other Latineers had no problem with me having a night off but I had to go to Mr Gerwurtz and ask permission—it was not something I relished, as he had a very stern side to him.

      ‘Mr Gewurtz I have this opportunity to go down to New York and do something really big time.’ Looking back I can’t believe I actually said ‘big time’. ‘I have been asked to play bass at a recording session next Tuesday night.’

      ‘You have Tony? That’s great, what kind of music is it?’

      ‘It’s rock ’n’ roll Mr Gewurtz.’

      ‘Hmmm, well, if it is the chance of a lifetime I can’t be heartless, so I’ll give you the day off.’ Then he added, ‘I’ll have to dock you one day’s pay.’

      The upside of having my pay docked was a promised session fee of $25. The name of that song was ‘Malegeuna Rock’, based on the Spanish classic Malageuna. The bass part followed the main melody of the song, which is why they desperately needed a bass player. It was very exciting to record in a really nice recording studio in Manhattan, although I can’t remember its name (and it’s probably not there anymore). This was my first encounter with a record producer. We weren’t allowed in the control room, but a man’s voice kept coming over the talkback speaker giving us feedback like, ‘Hey, bass player. Your E string’s flat!’ I didn’t like his tone and found his interjections very annoying.

      After the session Jimmy Nebb said, ‘You were really great kid, we love the way you play bass. Would you like to join the group?’

      Maybe it was the euphoria of playing on a session, maybe it was the idea that we might have a hit on our hands, whatever it was I agreed to join The Crystals after the summer.

      ‘Right,’ said Jimmy, ‘as you’re now a member we’ll not be paying you a session fee.’

      There was no point in arguing; it was simply a case of welcome to the music biz.

      After returning to the Catskills for the rest of the summer I was soon back in the city playing with The Crystals. In October 1960 Jimmy Nebb secured a gig for us on a TV show called The Saturday Prom on NBC television; the host was Merv Griffin who was just beginning to be noticed on TV. He was in competition with Dick Clark’s American Band Stand and the show went on the air on a Saturday evening. A weekly feature of the show was to run a contest to form The Saturday Prom band made up of New York teenagers. The first week they discovered a trumpet player, whom they found legitimately from somewhere, but then they also added Johnny Syvertsen, the sax player in The Crystals. The first week house musicians from the show’s orchestra augmented Johnny and the trumpet player.

      ‘Well, we’ve found our first two band members,’ said Merv. ‘Next week we’ll add another.’

      That was none other than our drummer Frank Steo. In the following weeks Jim Petricionne, our piano player, and Joey Strobel our guitar player were added. In the final week it was my turn.

      ‘Ladies and gentlemen, here’s our bass player Tony Visconti.’ In my week we played ‘Lullaby Of Birdland’ in a Latin/Jazz style.

      The week I joined the star of the show was one of my idols—Fats Domino; his ‘When My Dreamboat Comes Home’ was the first record that I ever bought. There was another bonus from being on the television. The studio audience were often friends of NBC employees, and many were wealthy teenage WASPy girls that came from uptown New York City—5th Avenue, Park Avenue, Madison Avenue. Through them I got invited to a couple of teenage society parties; I was out of my social depth, but flirtation knows no boundaries. Several firsts happened as a result of joining The Crystals. We got a gig on a TV show in Detroit and we flew there in an eight-seater aircraft—it was my first flight. We got another gig in Washington DC and that was my first road trip. I had only ever been as far as Indiana and Florida on family holidays. I was not quite 16, but I’d met the Fat Man, flown in a plane, been ‘on the road’, and met some rich girls—life was good.

      I had been listening to jazz records since I was 12 years old and from these I learned how to imitate bass lines from the likes of Milt Hinton and Charlie Mingus. I got to sound pretty convincing when I played with a drummer like Frank Steo—one of the best drummers I’ve ever worked with. We became good friends and I would lug my bass over to his parents’ apartment and we would play for hours and hours on end. We would discuss the merits of playing in front of the beat, in the middle of the beat, or behind the beat. I was really fine-tuning my jazz chops and at the same time developing big thick calluses on my right hand; my little party trick was stubbing out a cigarette on my callus. The Crystals were also jazz players; pianist Jimmy Petricionne also played alto sax and we would jam in his parents’ basement in Brooklyn. I still have tapes of Frank Steo, myself, and Danny Kalb, a guitarist—he went on to form the Blues Project with Al Kooper—and we sound great; almost like a Blue Note recording as it was done so well. I had a three-channel mixer into which I would stick three microphones, balance it and send the signal to my Dad’s mono tape recorder; I got a really good sound. It was the beginning of my interest in the recording process. Jazz was my calling at this point, rock ‘n’ roll and whatever else I did, I did for the money. It wasn’t until I heard the clarion call of the Beatles that I knew rock was the place to be. If people were going to write songs with chord changes like that, I wanted back in.

      My best friend, Bruce Tergesen, whose family was one of the few Norwegian families in our neighbourhood, made the mixer for me. Bruce was two years older than me and we had become friends when I was about ten years old. Bruce was also the first person I knew who had a transistor radio. He went to Brooklyn Technical High School and he was an electronics genius. He modified and improved the sound of a couple of vacuum tube radios for me, and also my Fender guitar amp and the tape recorder on which I made my early demos. Bruce had a brother called George who was ten years older than us; he and his wife Ruth introduced us to jazz.

      My enthusiastic musical endeavours earned me a devastating ultimatum from my father. In the words of the do-wop classic by the Silhouettes—‘Getta job.’

      ‘But Dad, I have a job.’ I had a standing arrangement with a society band organizer, Lester Lanin, the big name in the world of society events bands. Each weekend I’d play weddings and bar mitzvahs; at 16 I looked pretty cool in a tuxedo. I’d play the standards on my conventional bass and then come out to the front and play and sing rock songs with my guitar. My father, who was working as a carpenter, couldn’t get to grips with me lying on the couch during the week watching TV while he went out to work—it infuriated him, despite the fact that I was earning $100 a weekend—about the same as he was earning from working all week.

      ‘Junior, you either get a job or you get out of this house. You can’t rely on music, it’s not steady work, what are you going to fall back on?’

      I was offended, because I felt I was a professional musician with a union card, but no argument from me would convince my dad, it all fell on deaf ears.

      With this ultimatum hanging over me I got a phone call from one of my society musician friends. ‘There’s a job going at Ben Maksik’s Town and Country Club,’ he told me.

      This famous Brooklyn nightclub was run by Ben Maksik, who had worked in Las Vegas before deciding to bring Vegas to New York, and while he couldn’t bring the gambling he could bring the opulent shows with high-kicking dancing girls, and singers such as Tony Bennett and comedians that included Buddy Hackett. The bass player in the house band had left and my friend, who didn’t know how old I was, suggested me. But there was a problem, you had to be 18 to work in a nightclub and have a clean criminal record. Of course the latter was no problem and despite the age issue I still went for the audition with the leader of the house band, Ned Harvey. He had worked with just about everyone, and liked my playing very much. From my school experience I learned to sight-read Schubert’s Symphony No 1 and Finlandia by Sibelius, so reading some simple band arrangements for bass was a breeze. As soon as I had auditioned I came

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