By Paul Freeman [March 9, 2011 Interview]

In the genre’s golden age, Mark Lindsay was one of rock ‘n’ roll’s most dynamic vocalists, as well as one of its most exciting showmen.

You can experience the irresistible energy for yourself, thanks to the new Columbia/Legacy release, “The Essential Paul Revere & The Raiders.” In exhilarating fashion, Lindsay powers through such hits as “Hungry,” “Kicks,” “Steppin’ Out,” “Good Thing” and “Indian Reservation.” The double-CD package rocks from start to finish.

From 1966 through 1969, only The Beatles and The Rolling Stones sold more records in the U.S. than Paul Revere & The Raiders. Their Revolutionary War outfits, Lindsay’s ponytail and the band’s wild stage antics helped gain the public’s attention. But it’s The Raiders’ masterfully crafted recordings that make them legends. Are you listening, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

The band burst out of Idaho with a sense of fun and an ability to blow the roof off any joint they played.

The Raiders, brimming with personality, led by charismatic Lindsay and zany Revere, hosted the ABC series, “Where the Action Is,” “It’s Happening” and “Happening ‘68.” These were great TV showcases for the chart artists of the day.

Lindsay, who became adept at producing records, enjoyed solo success with such tunes as “Arizona” and “Silverbird.” He later became head of A&R for United Artists Records. He wrote music for movies such as “For Pete’s Sake” and “The Love Machine.”

His popular jingles included Datsun, Kodak and Levi’s. He has also been involved in radio and webcasting.

But he never lost his passion for taking command of a stage. And his voice remains as soulfully rocking as ever. Today, Lindsay’s performances continue to rocket audiences out of their seats.

On his birthday, the always affable Lindsay took time to share his memories with Pop Culture Classics.

POP CULTURE CLASSICS:
Happy birthday! What’s your secret to retaining all that youthful energy?

MARK LINDSAY:
Well, couple things. We started RV-ing full-time six months ago. So we are going to travel around like gypsies and if I have a gig somewhere, there’s always an airport near and I just jump on the plane, come back and we continue. And because of that lifestyle, I’m walking like four to six miles on new trails every day and riding and my mind is going and my body’s going. I feel fantastic!

PCC:
Is it just a spirit of adventure that’s leading you into that lifestyle?

LINDSAY:
I think so. You know, I played in my first band when I was 13. And I’ve been on the road on and off since then. I retired about five years ago. That lasted about two years and then, just short of blowing my brains out, I got back on the road [Laughs]. I guess I’m just an old road dog. I’ll never stop. I’ll die in the saddle.

PCC:
Florida had been your base?

LINDSAY:
Yeah. Over the last 20 years, we’ve [Lindsay and wife Deb] lived in California, Oregon, Arizona, then again in Oregon, then California and then Arizona again. Memphis, Nashville, Idaho in the woods, Maui for eight years, upstate New York and Florida. So we’ve done Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, Southwest, Midwest and Hawaii. After about three years in Jupiter, we’re going, ‘Well, you know where should we go next?’ We decided to bite the bullet, take two years, travel around and, if we don’t like it, we’ll settle down somewhere, and if we do like it, we’ll just keep going. Right now, it looks like we’re going to keep going.

PCC:
That’s cool. What do you think about the new Columbia/Legacy Raiders release. Did you have any input into the song selection?

LINDSAY:
No, the only input I had was in recording the original songs. The selections, I think Bob Irwin [the astute Sundazed Records maven] picked everything and mastered. And I put my two cents in. But I trust him. He probably knows the Raiders material as good as I do and he’s probably more objective than I am. So I’m just glad people are still finding it interesting and we get new fans all the time that discover Paul Revere and the Raiders and like what they hear. And there you go!

PCC:
Yeah, that’s quite a phenomenon that new listeners, new generations are constantly discovering the band. Why do you think it has that kind of timeless appeal?

LINDSAY:
Well, rock ‘n’ roll is the one genre of music that refused to have a 10 or 20-year run. Somehow it kept going. And it appeals to the people that were there and grew up with it. And my theory is that music that grabs you when you’re a teenager or in your youth, will still grab young people later on, if it’s good music. And that seems to be what’s happening. And I’m very glad of it.

Today’s music, all the progressive stuff, most of it has roots in rock ‘n’ roll, except rap, of course, which is its own genre. But rock ‘n’ roll refuses to roll over... It’s like me - rock ‘n’ roll refuses to roll over and die.

PCC:
You mentioned being in a band from age 13. What were the original inspirations that made you want to perform?

LINDSAY:
I’ve loved music all my life. I grew up listening to the radio. In Idaho, where I grew up, it was mostly country and classical stations and then pop stations. I liked it all. When I was about 12, I wanted to play in a band, so I went out - I wanted to be a drummer. I thought playing drums would be the greatest thing in the world - went out and priced drums. I came back and said, ‘I’ll be the singer.’ [Laughs]

PCC:
So when did you pick up the sax?

LINDSAY:
I met Revere when I was 16 or 17...

PCC:
I’ve read a lot of different stories about how the two of you met. What’s the real deal there?

LINDSAY:
The truth is, at that time, I was playing with a group called Freddy Chapman and the Idaho Playboys. It was a country group and I was the rockabilly singer, billed as ‘Mark Allen, he bawls and squalls and climbs up the walls.’

PCC:
Mark Allen?

LINDSAY:
Yeah, Freddy said, ‘What’s your stage name, kid?’ I said, ‘Well, Mark Lindsay.’ And he said, ‘No, no, no. You’ve got to have a stage name’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t.’ He said, ‘Well, do you have a middle name?’ I said, ‘Yeah, it’s Allen.’ He goes, ‘Mark Allen, yeah, that sounds good.’

Anyway, I was in that band with these guys and when I would play with one of the guitar players, we were rehearsing, right across the street, I could hear another band rehearsing and it was a band called The Red Hughes Band. And Revere was the piano player in that band. And they played nothing but rock ‘n’ roll. I went, ‘Shit!’ I mean, asterisk asterisk asterisk.

PCC:
[Laughs] We’re online, not print. We can say ‘shit.’ Enjoy.

LINDSAY:
Well, I said, ‘That’s the band I want to be in, because they play nothing but rock ‘n’ roll.’ And I was a rock ‘n’ roller at heart. So, to make a long story short, they played at the Elk’s Lodge. And at the time, I was working at McClure’s Bakery.

I was lying about my age, because we were supposed to be 18 and I wasn’t. But anyway, when the gig happened, I wandered in. And I wore thick glasses, but I didn’t have them on that night, because I was so vain and paranoid. I just kind of walked up to the stage through the crowd, which parted like the Red Sea. And everybody said, ‘There’s a skinny, crazy kid with a weird look in his eye!’ [Chuckles]. Anyway, I made my way to the stage and demanded to sing a song. So they let me sing a song.

‘What do you want to sing?’ I said, ‘Anything you can play.’ Of course, that wasn’t true. But they luckily picked a Jerry Lee song, a flip side. It was called ‘Crazy Arms,’ an old Hank Williams tune. I knew it well. So I sang and, for the three minutes I was singing the song, it was great. And then as soon as the music was over, I went, ‘Uh-oh,’ I’m back to being Mark Lindsay again.’ So I ran out the door and I was gone.

The next day was a Sunday and McClure’s Bakery didn’t delivery any bread or buns. And Revere had a drive-in restaurant, a Reed and Bell root beer drive-in. He sold a lot of hamburgers and he needed buns. But we didn’t deliver on Sundays, so he came in and picked them up himself. So he’s waiting for me to get his order ready. I’m standing there, I’ve got my baker’s apron on, my baker’s hat. Covered with flour. I’ve got the thick glasses on.

He says, ‘You know, a funny thing happened last night. I was playing up at the Elk’s Lodge. It was a great crowd. But a weird thing happened. In the middle of the show, this crazy skinny kid, with a weird look in his eye, came up and demanded to sing a song and we let him. I said, ‘Well, how was he?’ He said, ‘You know, he wasn’t bad.’ And I whipped off my hat and my glasses. ‘It was me!’

So that’s how I met Revere. And I started rehearsing, when the lead singer didn’t show up. Shortly thereafter, that band broke up and Revere and I started The Downbeats, which then became Paul Revere and The Raiders.

PCC:
So really, there was like a Clark Kent - Superman thing with the glasses, whipping them off when it was time for the powers to take over.

LINDSAY:
Totally. There was this shy, skinny kid... but the funny thing is, even after The Raiders started having success, when I was on stage, or doing TV or something, I was Superman. And then, when I wasn’t performing, I would go back to being [in radio announcer’s resonant, deep voice] mild-mannered Clark Kent... or mild-mannered Mark Lindsay. There was definitely a dichotomy there.

PCC:
So you really were a different person on stage.

LINDSAY:
Yeah, I always felt that way, which was great in a way, because it gave me the freedom to be able to do what I wouldn’t have even dreamt of doing in my normal state. But I just put on the persona of this stage guy and I could do anything. And I did! [Laughs].

When we got on ‘Where The Action Is,’ we had to definitely clean up our act, because the ABC censors wouldn’t have gone for most of it.

PCC:
[Laughing] What kinds of stuff would not have been TV worthy?

LINDSAY:
Oh, well, like I would split my pants several times during a show. And I had them made really tight, so I could do that, when I did the splits. And I had a hundred-foot cord made for my microphone. This was the days, obviously, before a wireless mic. I’d wander around the crowd... and, if I had to relieve myself, I’d just wander into the men’s room and treat people to the first ever acoustically mic-ed... wee-wee. [Laughs] Piddle. We’ll call it piddle.

And whatever I felt like. I’d climb into the rafters and hang by my knees. Whatever I felt like doing. I just wanted to try to do something different every night. And I darn near killed myself trying [Laughs].

PCC:
So all that showmanship came naturally for the band?

LINDSAY:
Well, actually, there was a time when Revere had to do his service and the band broke up for two years. I went to Los Angeles to kind of keep the name going. And we did a tour as Paul Revere’s Raiders. And the keyboard player in that group was Leon Russell.

So we’re out in the Midwest. And I remember it was Scott City, Kansas. And we do the first half of the show and none of the kids there have ever heard of a Paul Revere or a Raider or a Mark Lindsay. And we only had one hit. So everybody was like standing around saying, ‘Who’s this guy?’

So we come off stage, go in the dressing room, I go, ‘Whew, that’s really a rough crowd. I mean, like, they’re just standing there.’ Leon says, ‘Look here, kid, when we get back up there after intermission, just kick it to me and I’ll get ‘em goin’ for you.’ So we go on stage and Leon walks up to the upright piano, rears back and kicks the lid right off the piano. It whirls and lands in the crowd. He jumps up on the piano and goes, ‘You guys want to expletive deleted or what?!!’ And they all said, ‘Yeah!’ So he sat down and did his best Jerry Lee, rocked out for about five minutes and then we went back into the regular show and they were hoppin’.

So when we reformed the band in Portland, I said, ‘Revere, it’s not good enough for us to just be a band, standing there playing music. We’ve got to be a show band.’ So that’s how I got inspired. Leon Russell actually inspired me on to bigger and better things.

And I’d heard about things like Little Richard appearing in a sequined bikini and a feathered boa...

PCC:
[Laughing] Didn’t want to go for that?

LINDSAY:
No, that was a little bit beyond my ken. But I knew that Screaming Lord Sutch was carried on stage in a coffin. I heard all these crazy things. And I just thought, ‘Okay, I’m going to be crazier than the next guy.’ And we got a great reputation.

When I’d hang by my knees, I’d get real red in the face, or when I was shouting or screaming on stage. So Revere started a rumor. People would say, ‘You know, Mark gets really flushed. Is he okay?’ Revere said, ‘No, no. He’s got a bad heart. One of these days, he’s going to die on stage.’ And of course, that was a great rumor. Everybody came to watch me die. [Laughs]. And I fooled them.

PCC:
And the band’s name, was that just because it sounded like a good gimmick or was it because Paul was sort of the father figure?

LINDSAY:
Well, we were The Downbeats when we did our first record. And we were on a little label out of a suburb in California. It was called Gardena Records. And we were all there signing our contracts. You had to sign it with your full, real name. My name, of course, was Mark Allen Lindsay. But Revere’s full legal name was Paul Revere Dick. His middle name was Revere, which he never used. He hated it, because everybody in school teased him - ‘Paul Revere, where’s your horse?’ So he went by Paul Dick.

So when he signed his name, the guy who owned the record company was looking at the papers, said, ‘Mark Lindsay, Jerry Labrum, Paul Revere Dick... Paul Revere? Wow, that’s got a ring to it. Now, The Downbeats is cool, but, let’s see, Paul Revere and The ...’ And everybody said, ‘No, no, no. We’re a band, we’re all equal here.’ And Paul said the same thing. He said, ‘No, no, we want to be The Downbeats. Everybody’s the same.’ Because there really wasn’t a leader.

And the owner said, ‘No, no, no... we’ve got to make it Paul Revere and the somethings, let me think about it.’ So when we got the label printing, it was Paul Revere and The Nightriders. And we thought, ‘No, that sounds too much like cowboys.’ So I went to sleep and dreamt of pirates in the rigging and I woke up the next morning and said, ‘Raiders! How about Paul Revere and The Raiders!?’ So we called him and that’s what they changed it to. And that’s what it’s been ever since.

PCC:
And what about the Revolutionary War uniforms? Where did that idea come from?

LINDSAY:
We were playing in Portland, Oregon. And, at the time, we were just wearing blazers, like any one of a million bands. But we were on our way to pick up our cleaning and Revere and I were walking up the street and we passed this costume shop. And in the window was this mannequin, dressed up in full Revolutionary War regalia. And I said, ‘Hey, look, Paul! That’s the way that Paul Revere and The Raiders would have dressed, if we had played in that time. We kind of looked at each other and went, ‘Wait a minute!’

So we went in and rented the costumes and got everybody’s sizes and rented them for that night. And the first half of the show, we played in our regular blazers and it was normal. I think the venue was the Lake Oswego Armory. We played a lot of armories in those days. So after intermission, we dress up in tight pants and three-cornered hats, long coats, high boots and lace dickies and get on stage and rock out. And it was kind of an extension of my other persona on stage.

And everybody felt that way. It was like we were all dressed in costume and nobody knew who we were, so we could do anything. And the whole tenor of the band changed. Everybody got crazy. We had water fights on stage. The bass player almost got electrocuted. And it was wild and wooly and a lot of fun.

So we took the costumes back and thought we’d had a lark and that was it. But the next time we played at that venue, kids came up and said, ‘Hey, wait a minute, where are your outfits?’ So we thought, ‘Maybe we’ve got something here.’ So we had some made and that became our stock in trade.

PCC:
And then once you had the outfits, you got the idea for the ponytail?

LINDSAY:
Exactly. Once we were dressed in Revolutionary War outfits, I thought, ‘You know, we should all get ponytails.’ We first started with wigs. And a guy in Norway just sent me a shot of the whole group wearing wigs. Very rare shot. I’d never seen it before.

But anyway, that didn’t work, because they were so hot and we were playing all these armories and really hot venues, before air conditioning. So that didn’t work and I thought, ‘Well, let’s all grow out hair long.’ But the guys had trouble doing it, because you have to go through a period where it’s too long to look decent and it’s too short to tie in a tail, so you just look like a ragamuffin. But I was determined. So I stayed with it and grew the ponytail and it became a trademark.

PCC:
Did the uniforms become cumbersome at some point? Did you ever wish you hadn’t gone that route?

LINDSAY:
Well, it’s a double-edged sword. Obviously, when we got on television, five days a week - with that and our network shows, we did almost 1,000 television appearance, which I guess makes yours truly the most televised lead singer in the world just about - but along with that, emblazoned in everybody’s mind, when you say ‘Paul Revere and The Raiders,’ the first thing you see in your mind’s eye is the three-cornered hats and the lace dickies. And it’s that, not the music, that’s in the forefront of your mind with most people. So they tend to not think about the music. They think about the image.

And I think that’s probably why we haven’t been in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame yet. I know we get mentioned to be nominated every year. And there’s one guy - who shall remain nameless - who thinks we looked really silly. He shoots it down every year. If we’re nominated, it’s probably because we wore the outfits and they were really popular. If we’re never in there, it’s probably because of the same reason.

PCC:
I’ve always believed that was why the band has been ignored by the Hall, to this point. You recorded several of the greatest rock singles of the era. You figure some of the rock intelligentsia just can’t get past the image.

LINDSAY:
That’s exactly it. If you could take away the vivid emblazoned image in their forebrains and just have them hear it, it would be okay. But it’s locked in there. However, maybe by my 80th birthday, they’ll invite us in [Laughs]. Who knows?

PCC:
But it’s part of the charm of the band, that you kept such a sense of fun in rock, even when others were getting arty or trippy or pretentious.

LINDSAY:
Yeah, well, we never took ourselves very seriously. In the studio, I would do a lot of experimentation. And try different things. But most of our stock in trade, which Terry Melcher started with, was cutting really commercial records that felt great and just rocked out. Terry was incredible at making pop records. I hear them on this new set and this stuff was kick-ass music, you know?

PCC:
What was Terry’s genius as a producer?

LINDSAY:
He just knew the studio. He was a music junkie like I was. When I wasn’t listening to the car radio, I was listening to a transistor radio, walking around with it. And when I wasn’t doing that, I was listening to records on the record player at home. And Terry and I shared a house. And all we did was, we just ate, slept and breathed music.

He had a buddy in England who would send us releases like two or three weeks before they came out here. So we were always trying to stay ahead of the curve. I do remember once, when we got a pre-release single of ‘Strawberry Fields’ and ‘Penny Lane’ And we put on ‘Penny Lane’ and yeah, that’s cool. Put on ‘Strawberry Fields’ and it got to the demodulation - [Sings] ‘Let me take you down, ‘cause I’m goin’ to...’ And we’re like, ‘Oh, what the...! What do we do now?’ And it was really inspiring. And then The Stones came out with all their stuff. And we were just trying to keep up with everybody else and maybe get ahead. But, of course [Chuckles], you never can get ahead. You have to go out and do your own thing. So we didn’t copy anybody, we were just rolling with whatever worked. And we had some great songs submitted to us by Barry and Cynthia [Mann and Weil]. And then Terry and I took over and wrote some pretty good hits.

So we were lucky. We had a great run. And Terry loved music and he knew the studio and he knew how to ask engineers for whatever he wanted and they would give it to us. And I learned how to produce, watching him. And talking to the engineers - ‘What’s a db?’ ‘What does attenuate mean?’ I loved it.

PCC:
You mentioned living with Terry for a while. Was that the infamous house where the Sharon Tate murder took place?

LINDSAY:
Yeah, 10050 Cielo Drive. I actually met, ran into Manson up there one time. But luckily, I didn’t run into him that other time.

PCC:
Did he creep you out when you saw him? Or was there no indication?

LINDSAY:
Oh, yeah. I’d come home from a gig. I dropped my bag in the hallway. There was a meeting going on in the living room. And Dennis Wilson was there, maybe Abe Lastfogel [of the William Morris Agency] and Terry and a couple other people.

And I walked into the kitchen to get myself a cold one. And there’s this guy on the kitchen floor, squatting down, leaning against the refrigerator, like a door stop. So I try to open the door. He doesn’t move. I say, ‘Excuse me... Excuse me!’ And he doesn’t budge. And he braces himself against the door, but he doesn’t look at me. He won’t look up. So I walk into the living room and say, ‘Wait a minute, who’s the weird guy in the kitchen?’ And they said, ‘Oh, that’s just Charlie. He’s okay.’

But Charlie wasn’t okay. And after about two or three meetings, I think Terry realized that there was something really wrong with this guy. And Dennis had found him in the desert and brought him up to get him a record deal. But Terry realized something was way too scrambled to work. So he kind of backed out.

People thought that’s why Manson targeted that place, but Terry said Charlie knew he had moved to his beach house. But since he knew the layout, he sent his minions up there. He knew where everything was, how to get in and so on and so forth. But who knows? Charlie won’t tell.

PCC:
And you also lived in the John Holmes ‘Wonderland’ murder house?

LINDSAY:
It followed me. I didn’t live in that house. Actually our secretary lived in that house for a while. But I lived up the street, a few houses up. And when that happened, I did think, ‘Gosh, is there some evil specter following me around,’ you know? Kind of weird.

PCC:
How did you avoid all the rock star excesses, when it got crazy, such a whirlwind?

LINDSAY:
Well, to the most extent I did. Like everybody else, I dabbled a little bit. But I was always a runner. So it’s really hard to party all night for four nights and then get up and run every day [Laughs]. So luckily, that was kind of a deterrent that saved me... from too much. I wasn’t Snow White... but I might be one of the Seven Dwarves [Laughs].

PCC:
When you first got together with Terry, did he go back and study your early records like ‘Louie, Louie’ and analyze the strengths and see where you could take that?

LINDSAY:
Well, that was the only thing we had on wax was ‘Louie Louie’ and, on the strength of that, we got signed to CBS. But our repertoire, at that time, we were basically a white R&B band. And we’d play things like, ‘Something’s Got A Hold On Me,’ and Ernie K-Doe tunes and early Aaron Neville tunes and Gary U.S. Bonds, all that New Orleans stuff.

If you wonder why a band from Idaho is playing a repertoire that’s based in New Orleans [Laughs], there’s two answers. One, I used to listen to AM Skip from Los Angeles and get all the funky music I could that way. And two, Revere had a friend, a guy that he met, that went to the College of Idaho, named R.C. Owens, who was on a football scholarship and he brought with him his record collection of all this New Orleans stuff. So that’s how we got introduced to that.

Oh, and how I started playing sax - now’s a good time to introduce that. There was a lot of sax in the New Orleans stuff. And also ‘Tequila’ was a big hit. And I was just singing on stage and Revere said, ‘You know, we need to hire a sax player, because that’s really happening now.’ And I remembered seeing in my grandmother’s closet, an old sax that belonged to my uncle.

I was only getting half-paid, because I was just a singer. I didn’t play an instrument...

PCC:
You’re kidding!

LINDSAY:
[Laughs] No. Revere says, ‘Well, you’re the lead singer and everything, but you don’t play anything, so we’ll divide your share.’ So I thought, ‘Screw this!’ So I drove to my grandmother’s house, hooked up the sax, an old silver alto and went, ‘Brlaaaaaaaah.’ ‘Hey, I can play.’ So I went down and traded in my Epiphone guitar for a new Selmer Mark VI, got The Champs’ album and, in about six hours, my lip was bleeding, but I knew how to play ‘Tequila.’

PCC:
[Laughs] So when Revere was offering you just half-pay, didn’t you want to go back to calling him by his original last name?

LINDSAY:
[Laughs], Yeah, ‘You know Paul, you really are a Dick!’ Yes, indeed.

PCC:
What was the chemistry amongst all the band members? Was it all camaraderie?

LINDSAY:
Well, for the most part. After I started getting full pay... [Laughs]. Revere and I were the constants in all the different lineups. And really the partnership between us - He’d say, ‘I’ll handle the business and you handle the music.’ I said, ‘Fine.’ I didn’t want to do business anyway. Everybody else was pretty equal... for the most part.

PCC:
Did it mean something significant to the band to be the American representation on the charts when almost everything else was British?

LINDSAY:
Well, I think Derek Taylor, who had done press for The Beatles in the early days, and then had come to America, I think he was the one who coined the phrase, ‘America’s answer to the British Invasion’ And we thought, ‘That's true. That’s cool.’ And we liked that, sure. Because the British Invasion really impressed the hell out of me.

PCC:
Were there elements that you could borrow from that whole wave?

LINDSAY:
Well, I’ll give you a specific example. If you listen to ‘Steppin’ Out,’ it goes, [Sings] ‘Ba-ba-de-de-de, bwee-bwee-de-abba-do-ba-do.’ That’s kind of the lick. And, if you listen to The Nashville Teens - ‘boo-boo-de-de-ooda-dee-dee-dee-dede-do, du-du-duh.’ [From that British band’s version of ‘Tobacco Road.’] So I have to say, I borrowed a little bit from the old NT’s there. But everybody was borrowing from everybody.

Plus, there’s always what I call ‘subliminal riffs.’ If you listen to a lot of music, you’re going to find that you have something in there that somebody else might have used. And I have no excuse for why George Harrison's ‘My Sweet Lord’ sounds so much like ‘He’s So Fine.’ Butt it might have been a subliminal riff, who knows?

PCC:
Do you think it was a big advantage for The Raiders, being so road-tested before breaking through? A lot of the groups of the day had a hit, but no experience. And The Raiders could just blow them off the stage.

LINDSAY:
Yeah, that was a big advantage. At that point in time, we had like two or three years or longer of road gigs in armories and clubs and whatever under our belts. We really were a performing rock band. And we weren’t just put together, had a hit and then, okay, now go out and tour. So that was an advantage.

PCC:
The Dick Clark tours, the Caravans of Stars, sorts of things, with so many acts - were those adventures, as well?

LINDSAY:
Oh, that was all a big adventure. I was so thrilled. I’ve toured with The Turtles for a bit and I’ve talked to Mark [Volman] and Howard [Kaylan] about the early days. They were on a couple of Dick Clark tours, too. And I was just thrilled to be there. I almost didn’t have places to sit. And there certainly wasn’t a place to lay down. But I found I could stuff myself into the luggage rack on those long drives at night. I was skinny enough to do that and that worked.

And Howard told the story of how he was a seatmate of Tom Jones on one of the early runs. And he’s like, ‘God, I’m sitting next to Tom Jones! This is so cool!’ And then at night, Tom says, ‘I guess I’ll take the upper and you’ll take the lower.’ And Howard says, ‘What do you mean’ ‘The floor.’ [Laughs] So Tom got the seat and Howard got the floor. But he was happy to have it. And I was happy to have the luggage rack.

When I wasn’t on the road or filming a television show, I was in the studio. That was it. I could have lived in the studio. And luckily for us, by some quirk of fate, in our contract with CBS, they missed the part about where the artist had to pay for studio time. When I found out about that... [Laughs]. There you go.

PCC:
And the two TV series seemed like a lot of fun. There were a lot of pals hanging out there, but were there also guest artists who made a big impression on you, that maybe you had idolized?

LINDSAY:
Oh, sure. I remember when Wilson Pickett - it was ‘Happening’ or ‘Happening ‘68,’ one of those shows - and Wilson Pickett was the guest and, of course, everybody lip-synched, for the most part. Wilson said, ‘I’m not going to lip-sync. My band is here and we’re going to play live or we’re not going to play.’ There was a whole different pay scale for a live performance as opposed to lip-sync. Wilson refused to do it otherwise. So he played live. And his band just smoked!

At that time, we were filming on the stage of ‘Hollywood Palace,’ so it was a great stage and the audio engineers knew what they were doing and it sounded great.

And getting back to singing live or lip-synching, I’m not the best lip-syncher in the world, because I ad-lib so much. But when we were doing ‘Action,’ it was the same dilemma, we couldn’t do anything live, because of the different pay scale. But I became friends with the engineers and when we had a new release that I was going to have trouble lip-synching, I would bring a tape of the band backing me, with the lead vocal missing, and I’d tell the engineer, ‘Look, when I get out there, open up my mic, when the music starts and I’ll just sing live.’ And he said, ‘We can’t do that.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, we can. Let’s try it.’ So we did. And so a lot of stuff on ‘Where The Action Is’ is actually a live performance by me with the band backing. And we got away with it. What are they going to do now? Take our union cards away? [Laughs] I don’t think so... hopefully.

PCC:
So actually, you invented karaoke.

LINDSAY:
Yeah, there you go. I should have taken out a patent on it.

PCC:
How did you handle the whole mania thing, with the screaming kids and the teen magazines?

LINDSAY:
Part of it was frightening. I remember a couple of times, the stage actually collapsed and we were just inundated with screaming teenagers, which sounds great on paper, maybe, but it was frightening to have all these hands clutching at you, wanting a souvenir... like an ear [Laughs] or a nostril or something.

So it was heady stuff in one way, because we heard all the stories about The Beatles and Beatlemania. But when it actually happens to you, it gets unheady really quick [Laughs].

PCC:
What was the most challenging aspect of your career back then?

LINDSAY:
Keeping my head out of my backside. Again, the dichotomy probably saved me, because even though I was on stage, part of me realized that I was the still same guy inside. And it was kind of tough to put them both into perspective and then coalesce them into one that worked. But because I started out with a lot of insecurity and low self-esteem, that kind of kept me with my feet on the ground enough to survive... that and the running.

PCC:
Speaking of self-esteem, did it bother the guys in the band when Terry Melcher used The Wrecking Crew on some tracks, backing your vocals?

LINDSAY:
Uh, yeah, they didn’t like that too much. In Terry’s defense, and in the band’s defense, first of all, I would say that three-fourths of all the tunes that were coming out of Los Angeles or San Francisco, up and down the coast, in the late ‘60s, early ‘70s, had The Wrecking Crew on there in some fashion. And The Raiders were actually on their records right through ‘Good Thing’ and then off and on. Of course, I sang on everything. And sang background.

But we were on the road so much, Terry would start tracks and have a basic sketch already done when we got back and we could flesh it out, because we just couldn’t be on the road 200 nights a year, which we actually were, during the ‘Action’ days, and still put out four albums a year [Laughs] and film the TV show.

So Terry did use some outside guys. And it did, I think, tick off our guys a bit. But it was something that had to be done. You couldn’t be on the road and in the studio at the same time. It was just one of those things.

PCC:
And was Bruce Johnston involved in producing The Raiders at one point?

LINDSAY:
Yeah. I met Terry Melcher and Bruce Johnston at the same time. I walked into the studio. One of the suits took me into Studio And said, ‘Here’s your new producer, Terry Melcher.’ And we met and he said, Hey, listen to this, man. We’re doing a great song.’ And it was ‘Hey Little Cobra.’ And Bruce Johnston was out in the studio, with his head in a wastebasket, with an RCA 44 mic in there with him, to get the resonance, singing, ‘Shut ‘em down... ‘

So I met those two guys and... Ah, coming back to what I was going to say earlier. You asked how Terry found out about what we did. Well, basically, other than ‘Louie Louie,’ our repertoire was all of these black tunes and New Orleans and stuff. So we went in and just played what we would normally play at a dance and recorded it. And Bruce took over those sessions, because Terry wasn’t really into that kind of music at the time. And Bruce was a little more adventuresome, I guess.

So Bruce actually produced our first single for CBS, or the first chart single, which was ‘Steppin’ Out.’ And sang background on it. So after the success of that, Terry came back and said, Well, you know what, Bruce? I’m going to take over here.’ [Laughs] And we’d liked this song that I’d written, so he then said, ‘Look, I just leased this house. Got a piano. You like to write. We can write some tunes together.’ So that’s when I moved up with Terry and I started cranking out album tunes and we started doing some singles. And that’s how that all came to fruition with Bruce doing the first thing that was commercial and Terry coming back and realizing the commercial potential of the band, which he hadn’t really heard in [Sings] Somethin’s got a hold on me, whoooo!’

PCC:
Did you have input into the selection of outside tunes? Like would they give you a batch and you’d say, ‘Let’s do ‘Kicks,’ that’s the one that works for me’?

LINDSAY:
Well, Terry had a great ear. Later, he told me, ‘When a song came in, I figured, if I could hear The Stones doing it or The Animals doing it or even The Beatles doing it, McCartney doing it in a real rock voice, then I would think it would be good for you’ That was kind of his template, I guess. He was right on.

As a matter of fact - I think this was a true story - but I always heard that they sent ‘We Gotta Get Outta This Place,’ Barry and Cynthia, after we had ‘Kicks’ and ‘Hungry,’ to Terry, to do for The Raiders. But for some reason, we were involved in something else and he let it slide and they got ticked and sent it to The Animals. Bur I can hear The Raiders doing that song.

PCC:
Yeah, definitely. And I had read that you were up for the lead in ‘Wild In The Streets.’ Is that true?

LINDSAY:
Yeah, Gloria Stavers, who was the editor of 16 Magazine and took a lot of shots of me and the band and The Stones and everybody who was on the charts, put them in her magazine, she was friends with a guy, Bob Thorn, who wrote the short story that appeared in Esquire magazine. And the original title was ‘The Day It All Happened, Baby.’ And that was the treatment for what became ‘Wild In The Streets,’ the movie.

So Gloria said, ‘I’ll get you a meeting with this guy. So I flew to New York, hung out with the guy and he said, ‘How do you see Max Frost [the lead character]? What kind of guy is he?’ I said ‘He’s about a third Billy Graham, a third Dylan and a third Hitler.’ He said, ‘Perfect! That’s perfect!’

So I had the part, pretty much and was ready to start filming. I had met with all the people. We hadn’t signed anything yet, but it was really close. Just one pen stroke away. And Revere literally got on his knees and said, ‘Man, you can’t do this! We’ve got a tour booked next summer and you’ll be tied up. We won’t be able to go on the road. We’ll lose all this money. I’ll be destitute. I’ll be starving. And haven’t I been good to you all these years?... Forget about the half-pay.’ [Laughs] So I regretfully turned it down. And, of course, Chris Jones got the gig.

In retrospect, it’s probably a good thing, because I don’t think I was ready for an acting gig at that time. Singing was one thing. But acting, I would probably come across as really wooden and stiff and it might have been the end of my career right there. So it probably worked out for the best.

PCC:
But you did end up working in films later, writing and producing songs. Was that a rewarding experience?

LINDSAY:
Oh, it was a lot of fun. And I enjoyed working on commercials, too. It’s a lot of fun to hear [Sings] ‘Western is the only way to fly!’ and know that you came up with the melody and the lyrics.

PCC:
That’s a whole different kind of challenge, isn’t it? Having to tell a story in 30 seconds?

LINDSAY:
Absolutely, but it’s a really good exercise. Because of that, and the song ‘The Letter,’ I tried for years to make a one-minute, fifty-eight-second hit song on the radio. I got to two minutes. I couldn’t get under. But hats off to Chips Moman [who produced The Box Tops’ ‘The Letter’] in Memphis, you know?

PCC:
Hearing Barbra Streisand and Dionne Warwick sing songs you had co-written for films, that must have been special.

LINDSAY:
It was a lot of fun. It was very different. It was a stretch, quite a giant step from a stage at a rock ‘n’ roll venue. But it was rewarding in its own way.

PCC:
And ‘Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia,’ you wrote some great material that Dennis Quaid delivered in convincing rockabilly style. So if he could go from acting to singing, maybe you can have done the reverse.

LINDSAY:
Well, maybe. We’ll never know at this point in time, will we? [Laughs] Unless there’s a job for a character actor that used to be a rock ‘n’ roller.

PCC:
Your experience working in A&R, did you enjoy that?

LINDSAY:
That was the best thing for my writing that ever happened. When I got that gig, all my friends came out of the woodwork and said, ‘Hey, Lindsay, got this great tune! Can you have a listen?’ Or ‘Here’s a song for you.’ And I had to first listen to the song and figure it out, but then, if it didn’t work, I had to explain to them why it didn’t work. I put myself in their shoes. And if I got a call saying, ‘The song's not happening. Not going to use it. Bye bye,’ I’d have been really ticked, because, as a writer, everything you write is the best piece of prose or poetry ever put on paper.

So it’s really hard to tell someone, ‘No, we can’t use your song.’ But if you can explain to them why it doesn’t work - ‘Well, you know, you don’t get to the hook for a minute-and-a-half. That’s not going to work. You’ve got to get there in 30 seconds.’ And all these little things that you learn that make a song work or not work. So that was a great experience.

Plus, when I first got the gig at UA, I walked in, they were showing me around and they opened one door and here, literally, were hundreds, if not thousands, of demos, mostly tape demos. And they were stacked up six feet high in this empty room, this big pile on the floor, wall to wall. I said, ‘What’s that?’ They said, ‘Those are the tapes nobody listens to.’ I said, Why not?’ They said,’ Well, it’s impossible. We get tapes every day. You can’t hear them all.’

Well, I decided I was going to go through that whole pile. So I got to work at six or 6:30 in the morning, I was the first guy in the door at UA and usually the last guy out. I got there before the president and after he left. And in the almost three-year period I worked at UA, I managed to go through every tape that was there. And I got a lot of laughs. But I only found, literally, out of all those tapes, only found one song that I thought was viable. So I called the writer back. He lived in Georgia or Alabama, I’ve forgotten now. I said, ‘Hey man. I really like your tune. Let’s see if we can do something with this.’ He said, ‘Well, I wrote it Nilsson.’ I said, ‘Well, he’s not on our label.’ He said, ‘But it’s a perfect song for him. Can’t you get it to him?’

Through Perry Botkin, who I had done a lot of commercial work with, I had met Harry. He came up to Perry’s all the time. We hung a little bit. So I got to Nilsson, said, ‘Here’s a great song this kid wrote for you.’ He said, ‘I’m sorry, man, but you know, I write all my own material.’ So I called the kid back, said, ‘Harry writes all his own songs, so I don’t know what to do.’ He said, ‘Oh, no! Oh, God! My life is wasted. It’s over!’

The song happened to be about the holidays. And Ken Kragen [manager[ was having a Christmas party for Kenny Rogers, celebrating his success on the label. So I slipped a cassette in his pocket, said, ‘Here, this might work for an album.’ And it was a song [Sings], ‘I don’t need children in my old age, like scattered leaves among the trees. I don’t need you. And you surely don’t need me.’ That’s the song. He actually recorded it.

But it’s the only thing I found that was a commercial song. [Laughs] But in all fairness, most of the songs that were placed came in with a manager or something like that and had a more personal presentation. Most of the things that came in the mail were from desperate writers who had no avenue to pursue to get to a record company. And it’s like, they’re saying, ‘Well, you know that song ‘It’s All Over Now,’ by The Rolling Stones? Well, I wrote that and they stole it from me... and here’s another one.’ Got a lot of letters like that.

PCC:
But didn’t you also help break Gerry Rafferty at that time?

LINDSAY:
Before I was hired at UA, I was sort of pre-hired at a label called Ecstasy with Jerry Rubenstein and he and Artie Mogull became co-presidents at UA. And, as a test, they gave me the Gerry Rafferty album, said, ‘We’re thinking of signing this guy. Is there anything on the album? Any hits here?’ So I said, ‘Let me take it home and listen.’

So I took it home, came back the next Monday morning, and don’t ask me where I came up with these numbers, but I did, I said, ‘Okay, ‘Baker Street,’ it’s a monster. It’s a hit record. It’s a little too long, but if we cut it down, I think it’ll sell two or three million copies.’ They said, ‘Is there another single?’ I said, ‘Well, right down the line is a great tune, but it’s not in the same stratosphere as ‘Baker Street.’ But it’ll sell maybe 800,000, close to a million. And the only other thing I hear on there is a song called, ‘Home and Dry’ and it’s about 400 to 500,000.’ They said, ‘Okay, you’re on.’

So we released ‘Baker Street’ and nobody’s playing it. So I went to Charlie Minor, the head of promotions and said, ‘Let me sit in your office, when you make all these calls to the stations and I’ll get on the extension. Ask them if they’re on it yet and, if they’re not, why they’re not playing it. Don’t give them reasons to play it. Ask them why they’re not playing it.’ So he did and I listened and wrote down all these notes.

One station said, ‘Well, the guitar is a little too raucous for our format.’ Another said, ‘That sax thing shouldn’t be at the front, it should be at the end.’ And so on and so forth.

I had a little studio in my house. I went home, got out a razor blade and made 17 different custom edits for these 17 stations. Monday morning, I threw them on Charlie’s desk and said, ‘Okay, send these out to so-and-so, so-and-so and so-and-so. And ask them why they won’t play them now.’ And I guess maybe they were so flattered that we’d made a custom edit for their station - now, with digital stuff, of course everybody makes their own custom edits, but what they hay? - so they all went on it. And within that month or so, they all settled on one version, for the most part. And that was kind of my first claim to fame.

PCC:
Do you have an autobiography in the works?

LINDSAY:
I’ve kind of been working on it off and on for years. I keep rewriting it, going back and saying, ‘No, No, no, this is just facts and figures. It doesn’t have any soul.’ Or ‘This wasn’t the truth.’ And as I get a little more experience, it’s easier for me to go back and be honest about things. So I’ve gotten about 50 chapters so far [ Laughs] But I keep rewriting it. So once I’ve got those down to where they really work, then I’ll continue the rest of it.

PCC:
As you look back, what were the greatest satisfactions over the course of the career? The greatest sources of pride?

LINDSAY:
Oh, just surviving to this point [Laughs]. Oh, I don’t know... obviously playing ‘Ed Sullivan’ was a big thrill, just one of the high points. There are so many. It’s hard to pick them out. It’s kind of like looking at a graph of the stock market. There’s high points and low points [Laughs]. But just, my career for the most part, the success of the records, the fact that people still like the stuff. And the fact that I can still go out and tour.

I was out last year with the ‘Happy Together’ tour. We’re going out this summer, also. We got great reviews. They said, ‘Man, Mark Lindsay steals the show. He’s better than he was 20 years ago.’ So that was a high point [Laughs].

PCC:
So performing still gives you a rush. Any plans for making new recordings?

LINDSAY:
Absolutely. I told you this four to six miles a day has really been good for the writing part of my brain. So I’m working on some new stuff and have things in the works that I can’t really talk about now, but you should be, hopefully, hearing something in the next six months to a year. And hopefully everybody in the world will hear it. You never know.

For the latest Mark Lindsay news, as well as the opportunity to purchase Lindsay and Raider rarities, visit www.marklindsay.com.