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»The Week That Really Was

From Teen Set Magazine February 1967

After the last week of September, 1966, your intrepid (?) editor has foresworn and forsaken all morning interviews. Not only am I pretty impossible at 10 a.m., but most pop music people are still asleep-even though they're sitting there drinking coffee at you.

And so it was with two groups that one week in September - first the Left Banke on a Tuesday morning in the Hotel Knickerbocker coffee shop, which was being remodeled. Which didn't help any of us to a more pleasant awakening.

Introductions were made, which was nice. Coffee was consumed at an alarming rate, which was also fine. There just wasn't much of an interview. Nobody's perfect. I keep telling myself that. A lot of people keep telling me that!

Anyway - Five Left Bankes, one manager, one promotion man, and yours truly combined for our early best, and it was good enough.

On this particular morning, "Walk Away Renee" was somewhere in the middle of the national hit charts with a bullet marking a fast rise. They were definitely "making it" record-wise, and in spite of the hour and the sleepiness they were also making it wit-wise:

"We graduated from the idea of school. We're all college dropouts." "'Pretty Ballerina' will be our next single. Most likely. That is probably. Maybe definitely."

"We spelled Left Banke with an "e" because I wanted it to be noticeably different from any First Nationals."

"Tom sleeps in closets. He sleeps any time, any place."

The five Left Banke are Mike Brown, leader and clavinet player; Steve Martin, vocalist; Jeff Winfield, lead guitarist; Tom Finn, bass player and vocalist; and George Cameron, drummer. Mike did most of the talking, but the rest always managed to throw in a pertinent line or two.

Mike wrote "Renee" and admitted that there really was a Renee, but that was all the explanation we would get. "I put my ideas in songs," he said, effectively blocking any further probing. Mike's father is a producer at World United Productions in New York-guess who produced "Renee?" Smash Records in Chicago heard the master, bought it, signed contracts, and several months later (it wasn't what you'd call an instant breakout) radio stations discovered and played their record.

Although "Renee" is a soft ballad in a neo-baroque style, they perform "everything from country and western to hard rock, all original material." All group members write, but Mike and Steve are the "two basic group writers."

Their professional career together started about a year ago, when most of them were "just hanging around." When asked for a more detailed chronicle of their "hanging around," or just what they were doing before doing the Left Banke, this is what we got:

Tom: "I was a vocalist. I know where it's at."

Jeff: "I just got out the sanitarium."

Mike: "Nothing."

Steve: "I was an international playboy traveling throughout the world. No, really I was in school in Madrid. Hard school."

George: "I was back in my hotel room."

All five are currently New Yorkers, all are 18, and each one is individually and collectively interested in creating "a different sound."

The Left Banke were in L.A. to promote their different sound because "this is where our record is the biggest. But it broke in Cincinnati." They were making the usual round of radio stations and interviews and had to be off for the next session. We sort of straggled out of the coffee shop, a little better than when we first entered, said our good-byes and went our separate ways.

Next time -and I do hope they return -- it's going to be a late afternoon coffee break!