Today, "garage," "psych," and "punk" are three overused words to say the least. They're dropped from every direction to brand, market, and sell, but looking back to the early- and mid-1960s, they carried different meanings altogether. A garage was a place you kept your car. Psych, a ward for the unbalanced or disturbed. Punk? Well, let's just say you wouldn't have wanted to be one. Still, when you speak of undeniable musical mavericks and sonic visionaries like the Monks, there couldn't be more apt descriptions for their holy racket. Never carbon copyist revivalists, this five-person order literally birthed these genres through a fuzz-drenched evolution of sound bursting with social commentary and future primitive rhythms. Krautrock? It started here. They turned beat to ballistic. Do I hear non-believers? I said, "DO I HEAR NON-BELIEVERS???" We are NOT making this up. If you aren't already converted, it's won't take long. Press play, drop the needle, zone in, and see for yourself. This is the story of the Monks!!!
Part One
Pre-Monk Time: The Early Years
By Kevin "Sipreano" Howes
We kick off in America at the dawn of 1960s, when five young men just out of high school all joined the United States Armed Forces. Scattered across the country, they signed their names on the dotted line for reasons of their own. Their three-year terms offered discipline, a chance to explore new fields, gain valuable work experience, and to simply get away from home. It was an opportunity to see new places and meet new people. One by one and independent of each other, Gary Burger, Larry Clark, Dave Day, Roger Johnston, and Eddie Shaw all found themselves crossing the Atlantic and stationed at a 4,000 man and woman post in the small German town of Gelnhausen, 47 kilometers east of the much larger Frankfurt. The year was 1961.
Army life quickly became stagnant due to its strict regimentation and do-this don't-do-that attitude. Music was a warm-blooded distraction and mental therapy for the menial tasks and duties required of the young soldiers on a day-to-day basis. Both the country-and-western playing Burger and the Elvis-worshipping Day (from Minnesota and Washington States respectively) found themselves retreating to the Army Service Club as often as they could to practice writing and singing songs. "I met Dave very soon after I arrived," recalls Burger today on the phone with Light In The Attic. "The service club was a place you could go and check out saxophones, trumpets, and guitars. They had little practice rooms too. Dave and I were both trying to take up one room by ourselves, but after a while [of doing this] the service club lady said, 'Hey look. You guys both play the guitar, you both sing, why don't you get together in one room?' We did and that kind of started the whole thing off."
After initial hesitance, and the prerequisite sizing up of each other's skills, the pair developed a nice rapport and began performing off-base as a duo at a local GI bar. While their mandate was strictly shits and giggles, the assembled crowd of drinkers clearly enjoyed the music on display. "At the end of the first night somebody passed the plate around. I think we took home about twenty-five marks each, which at that time was about twelve dollars," says Burger still amazed at he and Day's good fortune. "We went back to the base and spread out all the money on the bathroom floor and thought, 'That's a lot of money!' We were making about eighty-five dollars a month in army pay back then so making that extra bit was a huge boost to our monthly income. Our little lights went on inside, 'Hey we could do this on a regular basis!'" Needless to say, the duo soldiered on with their melodic aspirations.
In time, Burger and Day felt they needed a little more ammunition behind them and in turn picked up German bass player Bobby Spaedel to enhance the sound. Next, a Gelnhausen local named Hans Walter was brought in on drums. After a good run of gigs, a young Italian timekeeper named Pat Vatalaro was brought in to replace the highly regarded Walter. Feisty, fight-prone Bob Rose was next in line for the throne and was eventually succeeded by the position's rightful ruler, Texas-born swing fan Roger Johnston. Trained keyboard player Larry Clark, from the Chicago area, soon joined the ranks, but by 1964, the seemingly ever-morphing line-up was without a bass player once again. Regardless, there was someone waiting in the wings, hoping to join in with what had developed into one of the hottest little bands on post. They called themselves The Torquays, a thinly veiled tribute to their then theme song, "Torquay" by the Fireballs.
With a vacancy left unfilled after Spaedel's departure, Eddie Shaw, from Carson City, Nevada, felt he was just the man for the job. He'd played jazz trumpet professionally from the age of 16 and was raised in a musical family. But when he couldn't find any partners to be-bop with (bar playing drums in a Dave Brubeck-type trio in the officer's club), he thought he'd give rock and roll a try, eventually buying a bass and learning the rudiments. Shaw was vocal in telling bandleaders Burger and Day that they needed a bass player and the pair agreed, despite Day's objection that their latest acquisition didn't have an amplifier. Eddie bought an amp the next week. At this point The Torquays backed up a variety of singers including a quartette of African-American doo-wop vocalists and a tall, dark, Italian-American named Zack (Ernie Zachariah) who was hired, according to Shaw, because he could sing "Ruby Baby" by Dion & The Belmonts just like the original.
Apart from rehearsing on downtime, The Torquays began performing weekend gigs at the Maxim Bar in Gelnhausen. With beer and women on the mind, the mix of GIs and locals were often a testosterone explosion waiting to happen. The audience had to be entertained and it was a serious test of the young band's growing abilities. With many of the group's singers eventually rotating or getting out of the service altogether, the founding Torquays themselves had to step to the microphone again to continue the never-ending process of updating their repertoire. Burger often took the lead on Chuck Berry, Ray Charles or Little Richard tunes. Elvis was Day's exclusive territory. Instrumentals like The Chantays' "Pipeline" were also brought into the mix. Back at the base, the band would huddle around a portable turntable and learn the latest material note for note.
Back at the bar, these Saturday night fights (as they came to be known) would often get rowdy enough to be broken up by military police, even diffusing stinging and choking tear-gas into the room when the unruly mobs simply became too hard to control. Clark only had to experience one of these hostile scenes to bring his army-issued gas mask along to future sets. Near the end of one especially boisterous evening, the air started to fill with a mustard-colored cloud of smoke and people frantically scrambled for any and all doors. Undeterred, the organ player simply put on his frog-eyed headgear and continued grooving along solo to his favorite number, Booker T & The M.G.'s "Green Onions." After finishing the extended version, he met up with his band mates outside the venue stating that there was no way the owner of the club wouldn't pay their full wages now, because despite the bar being shut down early, he'd completed the band's obligations by himself.
Another less strenuous job was the army-related "Operation Jingle Bells," an initiative set up by their bases' Commander Of Post as a PR move: The Torquays would perform at local hospitals, rest homes, and the odd military function. With their reputation as a live act legitimized by their work at the Maxim, they were starting to realize the potential for bigger and better things. Burger states: "We soon learned that we could get time off from the army if we played our cards right, which we did very well. The last year or so, all we did basically was play music." One step further, by the winter of 1964, the band had all been discharged from active service. But the instead of returning home to the States, The Torquays decided to stay in Europe and as Burger explains, "play on the economy for awhile, meaning German places, not GI places." Clark adds: "We decided it would be fun to stay over there as civilians and play music [for a living]." Even Johnston was brought back into the fold, returning to Europe to keep time with the group after saddling up in Texas for a brief respite after his discharge.
Encouragingly, there was the promise of steady work from notable booking agent Hans Reich, the biggest name in Frankfurt at the time. By playing the bevy of dancing clubs around Stuttgart, Munich, and the beer-soaked taverns close to army bases where American soldiers would hang out, there would be plenty of work for the young band. Now fully immersed in German culture, they continued to pick up the language through osmosis, but were a little surprised to find so much English being spoken as well. "It was nice in Germany that a lot of people would speak English [to us]," says Clark. "I understood that many of the children had learnt English in school. That helped to adjust."
Germany was only beginning to get back on its feet post World War II. Especially within a certain segment of the older generation, the axis powers' loss still hung heavy and American presence was viewed with distrust and scorn. Hitler's dream was extinguished and it took its toll on the country in many ways. Burger explains the younger viewpoint: "The Germans didn't have much money at that time. This wasn't that long after the war and they were just starting to get back on their feet economically speaking. There was a lot of construction going on. Plenty of building and jobs were starting to come. Their wages weren't great so the German kids didn't have a lot of loose change in their pockets, but when they did, they loved music and they loved rock and roll."
Despite any language or cultural barriers, the main mode of currency for The Torquays was "beat," the infectious rocking guitar, bass, and drum-based music from the UK. Beat simply ruled the roost in the youthful German nightclub scene of the early- to mid-1960s. With bands like The Beatles being imported directly from England to play in Hamburg–the capitol of beat music in Germany–there was an unquenchable thirst for the genre's danceable rhythm and hook-infused vocal harmonies. The kids couldn't get enough and there were countless bands from far and wide filling the need. But as with any scene, some of the groups were much better than others. The crème often rose to the top.
Throughout early 1965, The Torquays performed seven nights a week in the beat clubs of Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Munich, Nuremburg, and other regions of central and southern Germany. The daily ritual was to practice in the afternoon, eat, rest, perform all night, party later, sleep (for a bit), then do it all again. Playing for hours upon hours and from town-to-town or stationed on lengthier engagements, the group's set list had to constantly change. Performing vintage rock, US R&B, Beach Boys, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Kinks ad nauseam, the now tight band needed a transformation of sorts to remain vital. Burger and Day had begun to write more original material of their own and future Monk songs like "Love Came Tumblin' Down" made their first appearance during this period. "Mach Shau!!! Mach Shau!!!," ("Make show!!! Make show!!!") shouted the bar owners relentlessly from the sidelines.
In addition to self-penned songs, The Torquays were beginning to experiment with sound, too. During one afternoon rehearsal, Burger left his guitar up against an amp to take a break. Forgetting to turn his volume off, he noticed a raucous noise rising as he stepped off the stage. Enjoying the intense shock, Shaw and Johnston began playing along to the loops of feedback pouring out of speaker. The band duly noted this new addition to their sonic vocabulary and leashed it upon unsuspecting audiences and perturbed club brass on every occasion possible. Like a giant fuck you to the system, they made it theirs.
The band also entered the studio for the first time, producing an independent single credited to The 5 Torquays ("Boys Are Boys" b/w "There She Walks"). Recorded on a primitive 2-track machine in Heidelberg, both songs were original compositions and the five hundred copies pressed were sold from the top of Clark's organ after gigs. Efforts to shop the single as a demo to established labels proved futile, but the group gradually built confidence by performing more and more original music to receptive crowds, kicking away any initial disappointment. The pace of a busy band was hectic and they were having far too much of a good time to wallow in any misery. Missionaries of beat, they were hard-wired for rock. Once again, the right people noticed.
Playing a residency at the Rio Bar in Stuttgart, The Torquays noticed a pair of cool customers who came in to watch the show a couple of nights in a row. They wore suits and appeared to be observing the group's every motion from the back of the room. Eventually coming out of the shadows, they identified themselves as Karl Remy and Walther Niemann, two young advertising executives with an unflappable interest in managing the band. They professed The Torquays were the future of beat, but only if they changed their name, image, and delivered a more progressive musical stance. In the seedy and dingy bars they practically dwelled in, Burger, Clark, Day, Johnston, and Shaw had encountered these big-promise types before. Despite early reservations, they listened attentively. What young beat combo didn't want to make the big time?
They all decided to meet a couple of days later for a visual presentation of what Remy and Niemann could offer The Torquays. First off, the potential managers wanted the group's undying trust. In return, they promised gigs in the beat Mecca of Hamburg, a recording contract with major label, and even artistic weight. Burger further explains: "We were a little wary of what they wanted to do with us financially as we didn't want to give away our rights to our musical heritage or our musical creations. We listened with a certain amount of skepticism and certainly talked about it amongst ourselves after the meeting, but overall, we just thought, 'Well hey, why not?' We couldn't see where we'd lose anything. If anything we could gain. [In retrospect] they were basically fresh out of advertising school, but way down deep they were hoping that this band would crack the nut and become immensely popular." Though slightly mystified, The Torquays were intrigued enough to fully and completely commit to the managers and two additional Frankfurt-based partners named Gunther and Kiki Aulich that would handle the business and design side of things.
The plan to make the team's rock and roll dreams come true was centered on Remy and Niemann's fundamental reaction against the lightweight pop sensibility of groups like The Beatles ("Yesterday"). Their philosophical ideas of simplicity, energy, opposition, repetition, and brevity were bandied around left and right to provide a new alternative that the band would execute like musical mercenaries. Lyrics would be universal enough so that German audiences could understand, yet confrontational and removed from traditional "I love you" themes. Under Remy and Niemann's existential eyes, the group assembled Burger and Day's early original compositions and, like newspaper chiefs, began a giant editing session, breaking down words and taking bits and pieces out until only the natural essence remained. Traditional verse-chorus song structures were abandoned. Minimalism was key.
Additional material was generated through intensive drum and bass work-outs where Johnston and Shaw would lock into simple and repetitive grooves, the heavier and more Teutonic the better. Chosen patterns would then be flushed out with contributions from the others. Jumping for joy when an idea was shaped, Remy and Niemann spent hours upon hours with the group together and individually. With each and every member of the team's key involvement in the creation of these elevated works, writing credits were to be shared by everyone in the band. This puritanical method was the foundation of the Monks and the name came like a revelation from above. Fried Potatoes, Molten Lead, Heavy Shoes, and The Green Onions were thankfully abandoned.
For this project to gel, each member involved had to wholeheartedly commit to its crystallized vision, despite individual backgrounds, opinions, and musical preferences. "In terms of putting together the Monks music, the only way we could do it was to take from everybody everything away that they loved the most and have them start all over again," explains Shaw whose Gibson EB-0 bass was constantly turned to overdrive. Still working as The Torquays by night, the group continued writing fresh material and experimenting during the day at rehearsals. Covers once recognizable began to twist and morph into something original with a sole focus on rhythm, beat, and hard energy.
Under Remy's suggestion, Day abandoned his guitar for a six-string banjo that had to be amplified with two microphones inside the instruments' guts. This would offer a more percussive contribution to the unit often appearing as simple off-beat measures. The essence was not to shy away from dirty, raunchy, and raw sounds–much to the chagrin of bar owners, most of whom simply wanted happy-go-lucky bands that kept the crowd drinking and dancing. Johnston's French-made ASBA drums were played in a more tribal fashion with a heavy emphasis on tom work, using the cymbals only for accent. Burger pushed his amps hard and bought a twelve-pack case of the new Gibson fuzz-tones from the States to enhance the powerful sound. When required, the bespectacled Clark (known to his German fans as "crazy fingers") became the group's main melody carrier, but also prone to repetitious eighth notes, violent stabs, and swirling dervish lines on his portable electric organ.
While admittedly influenced to some degree by groups like England's The Pretty Things and others of the more riotous R&B/beat variety, the Monks were cultivating a fully unique sound. Clark explains, "Frankly, I really didn't pay much attention to what the other bands were doing. We were just going off on our own path. From my perspective it was just an evolution into our own style." After another round of gigs in Stuttgart, the band and their managers decamped to a Ludwigsberg studio to quickly record an album's worth of demos to generate more interest in the group.
Ten songs were captured overall, each introduced with its own unique church organ signature by Clark. The feeling was light years away from the early Torquays material. "Boys Are Boys" made another appearance with the original 7" take sounding sluggish and relatively uninspired in comparison. The demo version was a much more engaging and dynamic affair with each instrument working for the better of the whole. Day's banjo in particular was a direct hit. "Pretty Suzanne" and "Hushie Pushie" were never recorded by the full group again, but did make appearances in their live sets (not to mention a television performance of the later). Much more than a standard demo, this latest batch of songs showed a band pushing the envelope and exploring destinations unknown. Like a trip aimed to the heart of beyond, they were able to map uncharted territory and draft the blueprint for a bold musical direction. The aesthetic was almost shaped…
Continued in the companion release Black Monk Time (LITA 042)