The Left Banke - LeftBanke.nu

»History Of The Left Banke - Michael Brown's Story 1985

I was working in the recording studio as an engineer’s assistant, and I don’t even know how Tom Finn started coming around the place, but I think he just came in with somebody who was a musician on a session or something. He had already met the other two people, George and Steve, and then started putting one and one together and that’s how The Left Banke started. I had already co-written a song for Reparata and the Delrons, the group who recorded the song “Whenever A Teenager Cries”. I wrote a song on their album called “Do You Remember When.”

If you’re talking about playing an instrument, I was definitely a step ahead of the other guys, but they made up for it in their own ways. The group was the sound, and if there were parts to the record that sounded good, I would have to say that everybody was responsible. Studio musicians were de-tuned from their reality. “You’re gonna walk in here and you are gonna play like you’ve been playing on every salami and corn beef hero deli session that you’ve been on.” It was really like that, though “how to play badly,” and it still didn’t work. They had to play parts.

Mercury heard the tape, and they bought it for a thousand dollars. They released it and worked on that record. All groups in general were not getting the “right” royalty rates in those days, they were a little on the low end and then you had a producer to pay, but the most important way to make money was having a good manager and playing live. There’s so much more coming from a show than from record royalties it’s not fun. You have to drive around with suitcases full of money literally it’s unbelievable how much money you make on the road.

The group was not able to know what they didn’t know, and if we’d had a good manager maybe everyone would’ve done better. But I think the others would’ve done better if they’d had better parents. That can be the blockbuster if you’re trying to be clean on the road, trying not to stay up all night drinking and then be on the road the next night. All of that comes down to discipline or lack of discipline, and if you’re disciplined, you went to school and if you went to school you could read contracts. I was straight on the road. I was a hard worker on every project, on this one in particular because it was the first. I was very demoralized going on the road with them. Nobody tried to better themselves as far as their playing goes, and I stayed with them longer than I should have. As I remember, they got some lawyers in order to have a meeting with my father, and I really didn’t want to see any reconciliation. There was no other way.

As for “Ivy Ivy" I didn’t like the way it was arranged, and that was very unfortunate for Tom (Feher), and Bert's (Sommer) singing. His voice wasn’t entirely suited for it, he was a little bit feminine sounding on the thing. As I said to Tom -- that’s the way the cookie crumbles.