Don Dannemann was kind enough to talk to PCC about his musical journey, including The Cyrkle's hits, meeting Brian Epstein, touring with The Beatles and recording the new album.

Current Lineup of The Cyrkle, left to right: Scott Langley, Don White, Mike Losekamp, Don Dannemann, Dean Kastran, Pat McLoughlin Photo by Daniel Coston

POP CULTURE CLASSICS:
How did it feel to be back in the studio as The Cyrkle?

DON DANNEMANN:
On one hand, it was a little bit weird. And on the other hand, it was sort of cool. What actually happened was, there was no thought of doing anything in the studio. We were approached at a concert we were doing a couple of years ago by a photographer named Daniel Coston. He just showed up out of the blue, took a lot of pictures. He turned out to be a really good photographer with lots of music connections, very knowledgable.

And over the course of some time, he became almost part of the band. He's like part of the family. And he suggested to us one day, he said, "I think you guys should do a new album and make it like, it you didn't break up, what might have been the next album that you would have done? What would it have been like?"

And we thought about it. I was a little skeptical myself. But everybody seemed to want to do it. So okay. The band is in the Columbus, Ohio area. I live in Delaware. I flew in and we recorded "Red Rubber Ball," "Turn-Down Day" and "The Visit," which is a song that was from our "Neon" album from way back in '67 and seems to get airplay. People have kind of latched onto it. It's a neat little ethereal song.

And then we did "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)," which was a song that we actually had an opportunity to do back then. And we didn't. So this is our version of "Feelin' Groovy." We did those four songs. And I was amazed, not having thought about it for a long time.

We recorded "Red Rubber Ball" and we thought it was done. And the engineer -- good guy and good engineer -- sent me his mix of the song and as I listened to it, I went, "Oh, no! There's something missing. It doesn't have the essence." Now, it wasn't his fault. It was what we did.

I have a studio in my basement here in Delaware. AndI went in and I did a lot of personal fix-ups. And we were sending files back and forth. "Okay, try this, try that. Raise this, lower this. Brighten that. There were a lot of intricacies to make "Red Rubber Ball" a new, modern recording, but close to the original. And that's what we wanted. And it took a while to get that. But we got it.

Bandmate Pat McCloughlin had written a song called, "I Believe She Believes." Basically, it's like a bar song. And it was written for his country band a good while ago. And it was totally sounding country. And he thought, "I would love to have this song on the album." The rest of the band thought, "No, it's too country.We can't do it." I listened to his original country version with my wife Deb and I thought, "You know, I think we can Cyrkle-ize this thing." So basically, I gave a rock 'n' roll flavor to it. And it came out really good.

And I really think it's a good album.

PCC:
The new album's opening number, "Goin' Steady with You," that was a song that you had written in your teens?

DANNEMANN:
Yes. When I was 16 years old and I was thinking of myself as a hot guitar player, my mom actually took me into a studio in New York and I recorded a bunch of songs, just me and a guitar. Two of those songs I had written. This "Goin' Steady with You" is one of those original songs. And when we were coming up with material for the new album, I put this one forward.

What we decided to do -- and I was thrilled about this, because I didn't even know I had it -- I didn't have the original tapes, but I had an original pressing from that session. So what you hear, when "Goin' Steady" starts, is my original demo, just me and my guitar. That's me singing that, when I was 16 years old, 1959. And then it goes into the full recording. And my concept on that was -- what would it sound like if say, Bobby Darin or Bobby Rydell sang it? Hence there's brass in there and biggish-band sort of stuff. That was really a fun thing for me, to have that original demo go into the final new recording.

PCC:
"We Thought We Could Fly," I guess there's an autobiographical element to that song?

DANNEMANN:
Oh, that was a very emotional situation for me. And this goes back to Daniel Coston. He sent me a song out of the blue. He said, "Don, just listen to this." And it was a nice song. It had a 60s feeling. It had some definite Beatle qualities and some Beach Boy qualities. And I got back to him and said, "Okay, why am I listening to this?" Because he hadn't told me. He said that now that I had heard it, he wanted me to know that this song was recorded in 2002 by Andrew Sandoval, a fella who was a good friend of my deceased bandmate, an original Cyrkle, Tom Dawes. And Tommy is singing all the background vocals on this recording.

And so lights went off in my head. I thought, "Gee, if I could get those vocals, I would love to pull off something along the lines of when The Beatles did "Free As a Bird" with the original John Lennon stuff. I went even further. Andrew Sandoval was totally cooperative, said, "Take it." So he sent Daniel the whole original session and Daniel sent it to me. I was able to get all of Tommy's tracks off of it. And I was able to manipulate them such that I could now write a new song using his vocals.

The only word he sang on those background vocals was the word "fly." Everything else was various "oohs." I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, but I knew generally how I wanted to approach it. I wanted to write a new song using Tommy's background vocals, that honored our history.

And the history basically was, we met at a freshman college mixer at Lafayette. When the band took a break, a couple of guys picked up instruments and started playing. A new friend of mine says, "Don, you should play with them." And we lugged my guitar amp down and I asked, "Can I play?" They said, "Sure, plug in." So we started playing and we really hit if off. That was the start of The Rhondells, which is the name of our band, which preceded The Cyrkle. This was 1961.

That's exactly was the lyrics of the song say. The next section talks about how we became the hot band on campus. Did Beatles, Beach Boys stuff. In 1964, we bought long-haired Beatle wigs and did a Beatles concert at Lafayette. It was spring inter-fraternity weekend. And it was an amazing success.

It started a chain reaction that got us to Atlantic City, got us to the Alibi Bar, got us heard by Nat Weiss, partner to Beatle manager Brian Epstein, got us to New York, got me to meet Brian in New York, Nat introduced us, got us a management contract with Brian, got us a Columbia record contract, got us "Red Rubber Ball," and got us on the whole Beatles tour. So it was an amazing phenomenon.

And another song on the new album, "We Were There," basically we're writing about this time period, when The Beatles came out and we were lucky enough to tour with them, and we had two hit records at the time, this amazing time in musical history. We were there. That's where that song comes from. And it goes into a little bit of detail about, "Oh, my God, we were there."

PCC:
Right after you graduated from college, before the fortuitous encounter with Nat Weiss, you were working in your father's sheet metal factory?

DANNEMANN:
I was. We essentially broke up at the end of the summer of 1965. We figured, okay, we had a great run. We basically all said goodbye. Earl [Pickens], our original keyboard player, he went off to the University of Chicago medical school. I was now working for my dad in the sheet metal factory. He had a small company. Tommy [Dawes -- guitar, bass and vocals] and Marty [Fried -- drummer] were back at Lafayette. Tommy had six months to go, a semester. Marty had a year to go. I would drive out and we would play as a trio.

PCC:
Were you envisioning music as a career at that point?

DANNEMANN:
No, no I was not. I thought I would be going into my dad's business. What happened was, now I was living in Eastchester. It's a suburb of New York. And when we met Nat Weiss at the Alibi bar -- he heard us right at the end of the summer -- he said, "I'm a matrimonial lawyer and I'm good friends of Beatles manager Brian Epstein. We are forming a management company here in the States." And he gave me his card. He said, "Stay in touch. Maybe we can get something going."

So we thought, "Ah, baloney." So here I am, playing occasionally back at Lafayette and working at my dad's factory and I had Nat's business card and one day, I just thought, "All right. I'm going to call this guy." And he remembered me immediately. He was really happy to hear from me. He said, "Oh, Don! Good to hear from you." He gave me an address and a time. He said, "Come down into the city and I'll introduce you to Brian." I'm thinking, "Really? Okay."

So I take a buddy of mine and we drive in. It's a side street on the upper East Side. And it's one of those small buildings. Maybe four stories. It was one flight up. No elevator. We walked up. And there was a party going on. Nat wasn't there. We stood around for a while. Nat came in. "Nat, hi!" "Oh, Don! Follow me." I followed him downstairs and there's a limo parked right outside on the street. And Nat very graciously opens the limo door and beckons me into the limo. He sits me down. And, son of a gun, I'm facing Brian Epstein.

Now, we are huge Beatles fan. We absolutely know who Brian Epstein is. So, gulp. I'm sitting in front of Brian Epstein. And Nat introduces me. And before I give you the introduction, I have to just backtrack and tell you what I think of myself as a musician and singer. And you'll understand why, when I move on. But I think of myself, now and then -- I think I have a good, light rock voice. So, if used properly, it's good. I think I'm a fair guitar player. I can play professional stuff reasonably well. I'm not Eric Clapton or Eddie Van Halen or those guys. But I'm okay.

Anyway, now back to the limo. Nat introduces and I hear his voice saying, "Brian Epstein, I'd like you to meet Don Dannemann, one of the finest musicians I know." So that's why I said what I think of myself [chuckles]. Because I didn't want to sound like I'm bragging like that.

So I say now to Brian, "Oh, Brian, it's so wonderful to meet you. We're such Beatle fans. And it would be great if we could get something happening." And Brian, who was a total gentleman in all of the association we had with him. I'm going to imitate him now [in a posh English accent], "Oh, yes, Don. It is very nice to meet you. Nat has spoken very highly of you and you should definitely stay in touch. Perhaps we can get something going. As you know, we are forming a management company here in the States. And let's see what happens."

There were a few more little back-and-forth exchanges. And then Nat, as graciously as he beckoned me into the limousine, he beckoned me out. And there I am, on the street. Nat closes the door. And I still see this as a videotape in my head, where the camera is actually behind me, looking up the street, my back is to the camera. And it's a side street. No traffic. So the limo just quietly pulls off and disappears into the darkness and fades out. That was the absolutely amazing moment, where, holy cow, I met Brian Epstein.

So I called Tom and Marty at Lafayette and we set up a minimal recording studio in my basement in Eastchester. We each had our mics and our amps. And we did several demos, which I was able to play for Nat, which got the ball rolling, resulting in him getting us signed and getting us into New York. It got that whole thing going.

PCC:
As the Rhondells made the transition to the Cyrkle, how did you broaden the base of influences, from doo-wop, early rock 'n' roll and British Invasion roots to the band's more unique, complex sound?

DANNEMANN:
Well, we had several demos and they were pretty good, actually, if I say so myself, given the minimal equipment we had. We did some overdubbing between the two tape recorders. And the demos were actually pretty good. I played them through stereo headphones with Nat which gave us a little bit of a thumbs-up kind of thing, because he had never heard stereo headphones before. This is 1965, in the fall.

And so it was a combination of the demos were pretty good and he had never heard stereo headphones before. So he was actually kind of blown away. When I hit play and the music came on, I saw his face light up. His eyes kind of went up to the ceiling. It was good.

So he brought us into New York and got us some gigs, got us some auditions. So we are now in New York at this point. It's getting into late fall. And Tommy, I guess had finished Lafayette at this point. And he got friendly with a fella named Barry Kornfeld, who had a publishing company with Paul Simon. And that's where he heard "Red Rubber Ball." And he brought it to us.

We were now with our new producer at Columbia Records -- John Simon. And he was a new young producer. And he heard us and thought, "This would be great. Let's do this."

You asked about us getting our sound. First we had to have an arrangement, because we had heard, on the demo, Paul Simon singing it with just a guitar, pretty simple. And there's a couple of aspects to "Red Rubber Ball" that give it its unique sound, beyond the song itself. There are two lead instruments on "Red Rubber Ball." One is the organ that goes, [sings the notes of the intro]. And then there's the guitar, which goes {sings the other instrumental intro part[ And they come together in a wonderful way. And it was John Simon, by the way, who played the organ. Earl was still off at medical school.

So now we come into Columbia studios and we're recording this. Take after take after take of just the track of "Red Rubber Ball." And I picture myself, as we're playing this track and we're getting near the end of what sounds like a really good take, this is where the vocal is finished and you hear the guitar and the organ finishing up. I actually miss one note. And we had this big discussion. What do we do? Do we do it again? It was such a good take. And we all kind of decided, you know, it basically sounds like I did it on purpose. The lead guitar doesn't have to be exact. And we let it go. And when you hear "Red Rubber Ball" today, there is that note that's not quite there. But you don't notice it, because it sounds like it's on purpose.

Another thing I still remember -- we kept on take after take after take. And we really were trying to finish up what we were working on. And Roy Halee, the Columbia engineer at the time, who was like the hot, current engineer at Columbia, and you might know him because he went on to be Paul Simon's recording engineer. He was really a good guy. And it was like, "If we don't stop now, I'm going to miss my last train home to Long Island." And we begged him, "Oh, please, can't we finish? I'll drive you home." I had my car in the city. So it was about six in the morning, driving Roy Halee home to Long Island. But we got it done.

PCC:
Working with John Simon [The Band, Janis Joplin, Electric Flag, Leonard Cohen], who became a legendary producer, how much did he shape the sound of The Cyrkle? What was the working relationship like with him?

DANNEMANN:
Oh, we had a wonderful relationship with John Simon. I never thought of it at the time, but in retrospect, John Simon was, to us, kind of like what George Martin was to The Beatles. He really was very instrumental in the direction we took and also played keyboard.

PCC:
And did he find "Turn-Down Day"? Or how did that come to the band?

DANNEMANN:
This was very typical. We would sit in John Simon's office and he would have stacks and stacks and stacks of 45 rpm records, demos that were being presented. And we would go through them. We might listen to 10, 15 seconds. We were looking for new material to record. And on some would we say, "Yeah, let's put that one aside." Most of them, "No, into the trash." And it was funny, like who could throw it into the trash can, like playing basketball. And "Turn-Down Day" came from one of those stacks of demos.

The song was written by Jerry Keller and David Blume, who was a jazz pianist. Jerry Keller is the guy who sang a 50s hit song, "Here Comes Summer." [Dannemann sings the first few lines.] He also went on to become the premier lead voice, in the 70s, of commercials. Every other commercial, it was Jerry Keller's voice.

PCC:
Was your version of "Turn-Down Day" very different from the demo you heard?

DANNEMANN:
I had occasion, on a radio show, to come up with other versions of "Red Rubber Ball" and "Turn-Down Day." I came upon Jerry Keller's original demo. And not having thought about it since back then, and listening to it, I realized that this was a great song that really needed arranging help. Not just in terms of the simplicity of the demo he did, but as far as the structure of the song itself.

We kind of straightened it out and basically made it a hit song. We did some things to the song that made it way more singable and commercial. I became very proud, when I heard Jerry Keller's demo, about what we did to the song. So there's a lot of stuff that goes on in songs, what you do to them, how you record them. A lot goes into them.

PCC:
The band always featured wonderful harmonies... did that come naturally to you?

DANNEMANN:
I would say it came natural, but we worked on it. We were very influenced by The Beatles and The Beach Boys. And we really liked to do that stuff. Now "Red Rubber Ball" and "Turn-Down Day" actually only had two parts. I sang the lead and then Tommy came in and did the harmony with me. And that was the basic Cyrkle sound.

PCC:
Was it Paul Simon himself who brought the band "59th Street Bridge Song"? What went into the decision to turn it down?

DANNEMANN:
I can't really tell you why we turned him down. Here's the best I can tell you. We came into the studio and Simon & Garfunkel were finishing up. And everybody knew everybody. And Paul came up to me and said, "Hey, there's a song we're recording on this album and I think it would be really good for you guys. If you want to do it, the album's not coming out for a while. You could record it as quick as you can and put it out."

We listened to it and, as best as I can recollect, we all agreed it sounded great. And for some reason, we were really hung up, I think, on other things we were recording at the time. And we basically just said, "Yeah, it's good, but we won't do it now. Maybe we can do it in six months or something like that, next time around, when we're looking again."

And actually in our show, we do a little bit where I tell just what I told you now. I say, "We heard the song and, for some reason, the biggest brain freeze of the 20th century set in, for which I'm still undergoing deep psychoanalysis, because we didn't do it. And I'll let you decide if we made a mistake or not. If we had done it, it would have sounded like this." And we go right into our version.

PCC:
Which sounds like a hit. How hands-on was Brian Epstein in the management of the band? Did he leave the day-to-day decisions to Nat Weiss?

DANNEMANN:
Yeah, that was it basically, because Brian was in and out of the country. So Nat was the hands-on guy, yeah.

PCC:
But Brian was the one who informed you that your new band name was The Cyrkle and that John Lennon was the one who came up with that?

DANNEMANN:
Yes. And that happened also in the studio. Brian came up to me and he hands me a card. It's like a business card. It says "Brian Epstein" on it. [Going into the British accent again] Oh, Don,no. Turn it over and take a look at this." I said, "Brian, I'm seeing scribbling on the back - Cyr..ker? I don't get what I'm reading" [back to Brian's British accent] "Oh, no, no Don. That's The Cyrkle {pronounced "Circle"]. And notice the funny spelling. It's C-Y-R-K-L-E.

"When I was back in Britain, I asked the boys..." -- he always referred to The Beatles as "the boys" -- "I asked the boys, 'Does anyone have an idea for a name for our new American group? They have an old-fashioned name and we need a new name.' And it was John that came up with 'The Cyrkle.' Notice the funny spelling -- C-Y-R-K-L-E -- as only John can do."

So that's our new name now and everybody said, "Oh, great. That's very cool. So I have in my hand, a card. It's Brian Epstein's business card with John Lennon's scribble on the back -- "Cyrkle," hard to read. And I am so ashamed to say that I am a master of not keeping things and that card was probably in the trash the next day. And I'm still bummed out about that. But John Lennon gave us our name.

PCC:
How did you find out you were going to be touring with The Beatles and what was your initial reaction to that? Was the idea overwhelming?

DANNEMANN:
Well, it was overwhelming. And what happened there was, it was in February of '66. I went into the Coast Guard Reserve. And I had six months active duty. It was while in boot camp that the Coast Guard very wonderfully actually gave me a three-day pass to do "Hullaballoo." I took a bus up to New York. We did "Hullaballoo" and that introduced "Red Rubber Ball."

So now I'm back in boot camp and when that was over, I was stationed on a buoy tender in Staten Island. So at least I was in New York. And it was an interesting lifestyle, because I was scrubbing pots and pans as a mess cook during the day and walking around the bend and taking the Staten Island ferry into New York and recording at night. And it was during this time that Nat informs me, "Hey Don, Brian's invited us on the Beatles tour. Do you think you can get off?"

Now The Beatles tour was one month before I was gonna get off. My six months were going to be up too late to do the Beatles tour. And they were actually thinking to replace me on the tour. They didn't want to give it up.

My analogy to what happened is, Andy Warhol had this saying that everybody has their 15 minutes of fame. And I feel like -- this is in retrospect, I didn't realize it at the time -- we were right in Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame, because when you're in 15 minutes, everything goes right. And what happened was, the United States government -- I'm kidding around, of course, but this really happened -- the government really thought to themselves, "Hey, we've got to make this 15 minutes of fame work and we've got to get Don on the Beatles tour. So we're going to change the six-month requirement to five."

Now, I'm kidding around about the government doing it for me, but they actually did that. They changed the requirement and six months became five and I got out in time to do the Beatles tour, which is basically a life-change, that that happened. It was amazing. So yes, I got to do the Beatles tour.

PCC:
What were your first interactions with the Beatles as that '66 tour got underway?

DANNEMANN:
The first interaction was just a quickie. We were on a big commercial airline. Everybody was on the plane -- band, management, press people. So it was a full plane. The Beatles were in the back of the plane. They built kind of a wall, which was their separate area back there. And I'm sitting next to our bandmate Tommy Dawes and Nat Weiss. We're sitting three on one side of the aisle. This is the first flight, from New York to Chicago, where the first concert was. We keep looking towards the back. Nothing.

Finally, well into the flight, the door opens and there's Paul. So Tommy and I looked at each other -- "Oh, wow! That's gonna happen?" We're sitting towards the front of the plane. He was slowly working his way up the plane. And you could see Paul was a very vivacious kind of guy, smiling and shaking hands with people. You could see he was being introduced to people -- "Hello, nice to meet you." And there were others he already knew. "Good to see you again."

Finally he got to us. And Nat Weiss, who knew Brian, he introduces us. So it was kind of like this -- "Don Dannemann of The Cyrkle, meet Paul McCartney." I got to shake his hand. And it was a quick, "Paul, great to meet you. We're big fans. We're so looking forward to playing." "Tommy Dawes of The Cyrkle, meet Paul McCartney" -- same kind of thing. A couple of silly little things back and forth. And then Paul says, "Well, great to meet you guys. Looking forward." And he goes back and disappears. And we spent the whole rest of the trip analyzing our every little word that we said. I wish we could have been cooler [laughs].

PCC:
Were Beatlemaniacs receptive to the Cyrkle at those shows, or were they chanting "We want the Beatles," the sort of reaction Jimi Hendrix endured on his Monkees tour?

DANNEMANN:
I'm going to give you my first impression of the tour. And this is in Chicago, and we hadn't really met them yet. We were really nervous, not about playing, but about being accepted, because we're one of the opening acts for The Beatles. Is everybody going to boo us? Will they be yelling "We want The Beatles"? No! It turns out they whooped and hollered and they cheered. We did our 20 minutes and everybody was enthusiastically cheering. The audience was great.

So we finished. And it's a hockey arena. I'm backstage, which is long and narrow. So I was standing just behind the stage, overlooking the stage and a little bit stage left. And finally The Beatles come out. They came in stage right. So I'm seeing them from a little bit of a distance, but not much.

And my impression was, they looked very elegant. They were wearing jackets. In the subdued lighting, it looked like they were wearing velvet jackets that were a deep, dark green sort of. And it was like magic. They're on stage. It's an indoor stadium, so the sound doesn't have anywhere to go. It's mind-blowingly loud. And the screaming -- you can hardly hear anything.

There was a woman standing next to me. I'm assuming she was press. I didn't know her. And I just looked over at her. She was just crying. It was such an emotional moment, tears running down her cheeks.

The other thing I felt, as to the feeling level of this concert, was to picture the Wizard of Oz backstage with a console that had buttons hooked up to every seat. When you pushed the button, it activated a charge, a little shock. I would look out -- and you couldn't see all the way to the end, but where I could see, it was as if the Wizard of Oz was pushing buttons and little girls kept jumping out of their seats. That was the feeling level.

PCC:
Over the course of the tour, what were your impressions of each of The Beatles?

DANNEMANN:
In terms of meeting them, I can give you a couple of little exchanges. The first one, we actually got called into what I remember as the dressing room. It turns out it was actually a large trailer, outside, right behind the stage, in Cleveland. So we go in and I just remember -- "Don Dannemann, meet Ringo Starr. Meet John Lennon. Meet Paul McCartney."

I ended up in front of George. And I had a wonderful conversation with George, who turned out to be just a warm, nice guy. So he's sitting on the couch and I'm kind of kneeling on the floor. A little table is between us. We're just looking at each other. He looked right at me. And he asked me how this happened -- What's your history? He really wanted to know, like how did you get here? What's the story of your band?

He even confessed, he said, "I want you to know, I am still blown away by this success. It's only a couple of years ago we were a bar band in Liverpool." He really appreciated the phenomenon that The Beatles had become.

I recollect walking around and we would be with John and he would look over and he would say -- keeping in mind he gave us our name -- he would say [doing a John impression], "So guys, have you learned to spell yet?"

I remember playing cards with Paul and Ringo. It was just sitting around in the hotel one night. There we were. They went from being Beatles to regular guys. We were playing for money. But they were very careful to say, "No, we're just going to play for quarters. There's no big money here." And it was just pleasant chit-chat, playing cards, "I win." "You got that." So they were pretty good guys.

PCC:
Candlestick Park ended up being their final full concert. Did you get a sense that they were getting tired of not being heard clearly at the shows, tired of the wear and tear and that they wanted to focus on recording?

DANNEMANN:
At Candlestick, George was walking around, taking pictures with his camera. We asked, "Why are you taking pictures? You don't think there's enough people taking pictures of this thing? There's pictures ad nauseum." He says, "Well, you know, we're getting kind of tired of playing in person. We don't know how much more we're actually going to be playing in person. Who knows? This may be the last time. And I just want to have some personal memories." And sure enough. It was. That was their last actual, regular concert, except for the rooftop thing later on. But yeah, there was a sense.

PCC:
Being a Beatles fan, it must have been amazing to be at these shows, at the back of the stage, watching them play live with the Beatlemaniacs going wild.

DANNEMANN:
Yes, it was. It was just mind-blowing. Anyplace they went, there were mobs. I still remember watching them play at a stadium. So we're outside and they're on the stage and we're on the ground, just kind of looking up at them. And all that had to happen was, you could see, Paul would look one way and that whole side of the stadium went bananas. [Screams] And then he'd look the other way and [screams] "AAAAAAH!!" Yeah, it was just an amazing, amazing phenomenon to be a part of it happening.

PCC:
That tour came on the heels of Lennon's "more popular than Jesus" quote, which brought a lot of outrage and backlash, especially in the American south. Did you catch any hint of that friction at any of the stops?

DANNEMANN:
Yeah, I mean, we did. We were not directly involved in it, but we knew what was going on. And I remember talking about it, like "Wow, I hope it doesn't hurt them in any way."

PCC:
Also there were stories at the time about the Beatles being disillusioned with the U.S., because of the bigotry and racial tensions that were dominating the headlines at the time. They had also begun to speak out against the Vietnam War. Did you get a sense of the band's evolving social and political opinions?

DANNEMANN:
Yeah, we would hear about it. Like I say, we never got directly involved in conversations quite like that, but yeah, of course we heard about it. Yes.

PCC:
You mentioned "Hullaballoo." What do you remember about The Cyrkle doing that show and "Where the Action Is," as well as "Hollywood Palace" with Joan Crawford hosting?

DANNEMANN:
"Hullaballoo," this is where I was in Coast Guard boot camp. And they gave me a three-day pass to do it. It was just an amazing thing. They were very welcoming. Paul Anka was the host. Leslie Gore was on the show. And Peter and Gordon were on the show. And they were all really nice -- "Oh, congratulations, guys, you've got a new record out." Now "Red Rubber Ball" was not a hit at this point. It was newly introduced. Buy everybody was really nice. We got to meet all of them. I still remember doing this.

And one of the biggest moments for me actually came the following week, back at Coast Guard boot camp, when everybody knew that I went to New York to do a TV show and it was going to be on tonight. And so the whole boot camp was in the dining room, waiting for this show to come on.

I remember thinking, "Please, let us be on. Please don't let them cut us." Because who knew? And it was the most surreal experience, just seeing myself on a black-and-white TV, doing the show, in that Coast Guard dining room, with everybody whooping and hollering and cheering. It was just a mind-blowing experience, really cool.

PCC:
And "Where The Action Is," was that a clip they used or were you actually there with The Raiders?

DANNEMANN:
We were there. Yeah, I remember being interviewed by Mark Lindsay. I think it was in San Francisco. But yeah, we were actually there. It was definitely cool.

It's funny the little things you remember. I remember that we were in the makeup room and the makeup ladies looked at me at said, "He doesn't need makeup." And I felt so proud. I guess I had really good skin, which I don't so much anymore. But I didn't evidently need it then and they didn't give me any makeup.

And I remember talking to Mark Lindsay. We were talking about the nice weather and we were going back East, where the weather was not going to be so good. And he was also a nice guy.

PCC:
And "Hollywood Palace," that was a big deal at the time, a major variety show.

DANNEMANN:
Yeah, a major variety show. And we got to meet Joan Crawford, which was very cool.

PCC:
Was she intimidating?

DANNEMANN:
No, actually she was not. I guess we could have been intimidated. You really got the sense that she was treated like royalty. This was royalty on the set. But she was very nice and we talked to her. We were very respectful, because everybody else was very respectful to her. So we took that cue. But it was all fairly smooth.

PCC:
After "Turn-Down Day" was another big hit, it was difficult to find another commercially successful single, even though you had some great tracks, including the Paul Simon song "I Wish You Could Be Here." And there were some excellent tracks on the "Neon" album. But it didn't gain any traction. Was that frustrating, perplexing?

DANNEMANN:
It was frustrating. And yeah, it was a little bit perplexing. Here's my take. I think if you listen to "Red Rubber Ball," there is something magic about that organ and guitar coming in and then I start singing and then Tommy joins. There is a very special sound. And I never realized how special it was until way later, when people told me how much "Red Rubber Ball" meant to them.

Somewhere in the mid-80s, a small record company that specialized in oldies [Sundazed] got a license from Columbia, which of course was our label. They got a license to put out the Cyrkle stuff. They put it all together and wanted me to comment on it. I still remember not paying attention to "Red Rubber Ball" for a really long time. When I got into commercials, that was my focus and I didn't even think about it.

So not having heard "Red Rubber Ball" in a really long time -- and that was the first thing that came on, on this compilation -- and I listened to it and I was actually blown away. The first second, you knew what the song was. And what a coherent and uplifting recording this was.

I hear myself start singing and I hear Tommy join and I realize, "Oh, my God, that's our sound." We were The Cyrkle sounding like that. And nobody else sounded like that. That was our actual sound. And there was magic, to that recording. And "Turn-Down Day" had similar magic to it.

And then as you go along with the later recordings, the recordings got sophisticated. They were great. Some really good stuff. We did really good stuff. It's a little hard to put your finger on it, but the magic of "Red Rubber Ball" never quite got recreated.

I actually learned something from that experience. People may not agree with me, but here's my take. You can take the best song; you can take a great song; you can take a great singer or singers; a great band; you can take great musicians; you can take a great arrangement; a great recording studio; a great mix; you can take great everything and you can put that together and you can guarantee you will have a good product. But what you can't guarantee is the magic that makes a hit record, as differentiated from an otherwise good record.

PCC:
It must have been a terrible shock, when you heard about Brian Epstein's passing in '67.

DANNEMANN:
Yeah, '67. We were on the road. I remember we didn't know what to do. It was like, "Oh, my God, what do we do?" We went back and forth. I think we finally cancelled whatever was coming up and we went back to New York. Yeah, it was a shock. It was definitely a shock. And I think his passing probably also had something to do with, over time, the record sales going down and our breaking up. There wasn't Brian's influence to keep us going.

PCC:
You went on to do the soundtrack for a film, "The Minx." [starring Jan Sterling] Was that an interesting experience?

DANNEMANN:
Yeah. And Nat Weiss actually set that up. A fella named Herb Jaffe [who later went on to producer such films as "The Wind and the Lion," "Demon Seed," "Who'll Stop the Rain," "Time After Time" and "Motel Hell"] was one of the producers [and co-writer]. The original title was "Squeeze Play." And Nat said to him, "Hey, how about you let The Cyrkle do the soundtrack for it?" And so we got to do the sound. The theme song, if you listen to it, is actually called "Squeeze Play," because that was the original name of the movie.

And then, when it all got finished, it turned out to be, most people thought, not very good. So they reshot with a couple of semi-pornographic scenes and put them in to try and stimulate the thing to hopefully get better sales. And they changed it to "The Minx."

We actually are in the movie as the bar band. There's a disco scene and there's some dialogue that takes place in the afternoon at the disco and we're just in the background, kind of warming up. And then there's the actual disco, they're there at night, dancing, and we're playing.

PCC:
Other than Brian's passing, what went into the decision to call it a day in '68? It was the fading record sales?

DANNEMANN:
Well, the bookings were also kind of going down, so we just all decided, "Let's move on." It was a simple as that.

PCC:
And working as a commercial and jingle writer and producer, were those fun and fulfilling years for you?

DANNEMANN:
Oh, very much. Yeah, very, very much so. The first exposure we had to it, there was a product called Great Shakes at the time [1966] that a lot of the rock bands did commercials for [including The Yardbirds, The Spencer Davis Group, The Blues Magoos, The Who and Dusty Springfield]. And there was this one piece of music, it went like this [sings a bit of the commercial] -- "Any place can be a soda fountain now... with Great Shakes, new Great Shakes. Shake it up with milk and make a real thick shake... with Great Shakes, new Great Shakes."

So we were called in. There were regular commercial producers who produced the music for us and we came in and sang. They told us what they wanted. That was our first exposure to commercials.

And then, as the group was breaking up, Nat made a connection and got Tommy to write a 7-Up commercial. So Tommy wrote it and we the band recorded it. That kind of got the ball rolling. So Tommy was now starting his own music production company. And I took a look at it and thought, "Hey, that's pretty good. I think I'll do that, too." So we both had music production companies. And we both did commercials. We did music and audio work for ad agencies. And we had nice careers. We both did well.

PCC:
And reuniting The Cyrkle and now recording again, what has that meant to you?

DANNEMANN:
At first, it was like, "Hmm, should I do it?" So here is this band in Columbus, Ohio called The Gas Pump Jockeys. Mike Losekamp -- the keyboard player who replaced Earl Pickens with The Cyrkle in the fall of 1966, so he's an original Cyrkle from back then, he's on 'Neon" actually -- he was in this band. And one of the other guys in the band, Pat McLoughlin, he said, "Mike, you were a Cyrkle? Why can't we revive The Cyrkle?"

Most bands of our era now, there are very few original members in a lot of the bands. In some, there's none. They just got the rights to the name. Anyway, a booking agent friend of Pat's suggested, "Hey, why don't you get one of the other real original guys. We'll put you out. You can do a Cyrkle revival."

Funnily enough, Pat could not find me. Now I'm not hiding, but Pat couldn't find me. The funny thing about that is, I have gotten occasional fan mail, from as far away as Russia and Poland, to my house. They found me and Pat couldn't find me.

Anyway, finally they found me. I thought, "Should I do this? Do I want to do this?" So they flew me out to Columbus. Pat and his wife Sandy greeted me. They put me up in a hotel. We had coffee. And they turned out to be really nice people. We liked each other.

Then they brought me over to lead guitarist Don White's house, where the band rehearses. He has a studio in his basement. This is really funny for me, because I think the feeling was, a major rock star is going to enter this house. Like I was this major rock star [laughs]. I mean, I was retired, just hanging out.

So they were all around there, the bandmates and the wives and they sort of make a circle. And I go through the circle and there's Mike Losekamp at the end of the circle. And they were wondering, "What's he going to do, when he sees Mike Losekamp." Well, I gave him a hug. "Mike, how are you?" We hadn't seen each other in almost 50 years. It was very cool.

Anyway, we rehearsed and we found that we liked each other. We did well. We did "Red Rubber Ball" and "Turn-Down Day." They knew them, of course. And then we were talking about other stuff we could play. And I mentioned the "Feelin' Groovy" story, that we'd had a chance to do it. And I just started the song as I do it, just by myself, and they joined in.

And that was kind of a magic moment I still remember. Scott Langley, the drummer, put his head down on his drums after we did "Feelin' Groovy" and he said, "You know, if nothing else happens with this, I had think we had a magic moment with doing 'Feelin' Groovy' as The Cyrkle."

So Pat rented a theatre, got video recorded. I ended up mixing the tracks, actually. So we had a demo. It took until the following year -- this was 2016 -- in the following year, we actually had our first booking in Lakewood, New Jersey. Something happened and there was a cancellation. I think The Lovin' Spoonful had to cancel. Producer Joe Mirrioni, who's become a real friend of the band, he scrambled, had to get a couple of different acts to change it around.

So we opened for this show. Gary Puckett and the Union Gap were the main headliners. And we opened the show and I still remember, when we finished "Red Rubber Ball" at the end of our little segment -- standing ovation. We all figured, "Hey, I guess we can do this. I guess this band is viable."

PCC:
The response to the band, in this new incarnation, must be very gratifying.

DANNEMANN:
Let me just share with you -- this was where I really got blown away by what "Red Rubber Ball" meant to so many people, which I did not have a clue. We get this from the meet-and-greets that we do after show. We just sit at our table. We sell some merchandise. People come up. And so many have said, "Oh, can you sign my 45? It's scratched to death. I played it over and over. It was my favorite song."

A guy came up to me, "Thank you. I just want you to know 'Red Rubber Ball' got me through my divorce. It was so uplifting. I'd wake up in the morning and I'd hear 'Red Rubber Ball' -- 'I think it's going to be all right. The morning sun is shining like a red rubber ball.' It just brought me up."

But the most poignant one, a gentleman came up to me. He was wearing a veteran's hat. He said, "You know, I've got to tell you, 'Red Rubber Ball,' we had it on a little battery-operated tape recorder in 'Nam and I can't tell you how many battles that song got us through. It's just so uplifting." And that just teared me up. And he teared up. And we hugged.

Just a couple of examples of what I have come to realize only in this revival that we're in. I've come to realize that "Red Rubber Ball" meant so much to literally thousands and thousands of people, some of whom I now get to meet, when we do meet-and-greets. So it's an amazing phenomenon, that only came about by being in this revival.

For the latest on the band, visit https://thecyrkle.com/