Behind the Shroud of a Detroit Rock ’n’ Roll Mystery: Part 1
The Career of Phantom Keyboardist Russ Klatt: A ninth in a series of interviews with Detroit’s lost rockers
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If you’re reading this ninth entry in my series of articles concerned with the unsung rock ’n’ dogs of Detroit, then you inevitably have an interest in one of the Motor City’s greatest rock ’n’ roll mysteries. A real life Eddie and the Cruisers; a mystery akin to the “ghost group” marketing of the Masked Marauders, Lord Sitar, the Guess Who, the faux-Beatles known as Klaatu and the ersatz-Elvis that is Orion, as well as Detroit’s earliest mystery-gimmicks in ? and the Mysterians and Sixto “Sugar Man” Rodriquez. Then there is the analogous “hype” marketing to Capitol’s Phantom in the grooves of Elektra Records’ Jobriath and Rhinoceros.
Failing to heed the words of Neil Young; choosing to fade away instead of burning out, we are, of course, speaking of the Ghost of Lizard King — the doppelganger of Jim Morrison. For a brief moment in time in 1974, a man who Detroit scenesters knew as Ted Pearson and later, who others knew as Arthur Pendragon, was a “rock star” cast in a tragic, dark comedy — that, as we shall see, was of his own making.
While the legend of the Phantom birthed in the pre-Internet years of 1974, the myth of the musicians behind the The Divine Comedy that we know today is a byproduct of the post-1990s Internet. When the Phantom’s analog endeavors saw a legitimate compact disc release in 1993, the tales of the wizard proliferated as the Internet expanded its reach through its blogs and message boards, its media sharing, social networking and vanity websites. The music aficionados and connoisseurs behind those sites — mostly overseas European digital coffers — exhumed the tales of the wizard for a new century of music lovers of all things ’60 and ’70s proto-metal and progressive rock.
While this writer put his best journalistic foot forward — to chronicle the lives of those disinterred Motor City musicians — with a series of Medium article supplements to my two books on the subject: The Ghosts of Jim Morrison, the Phantom of Detroit, and the Fates of Rock ’n’ Roll and Tales of the Wizard: The Oral History of Walpurgis, there is one more, final tale to tell. A yarn that embraces not Internet-based innuendos, or fable-threaded rumors, or journalistic-investigative assumptions: but an account based in the real, honest and unfiltered truth.
That truth, I am pleased to share with you, the Phantomphiles and Morrisonites of the 12-bar frontiers, is this worldwide exclusive, first time interview with a Detroit musician who actually appears on the Phantom’s Divine Comedy effort.
Please welcome to the digital stages — in the first of a two part interview — Phantom’s keyboardist and Hammond B3 grinder of the Leslies, Russ Klatt.
R.D Francis: During my conversations since 2017 with Detroit’s movers and shakers from those early days of the Motor City’s ’60s and ’70s music scene, I’d ask if they knew whatever happened to Russ Klatt, Harold Breedless, the Wells brothers, Russ and Howard, or Jim Roland — each connected to the Phantom project — and no one knew. It wasn’t until the investigative work of Francesco Lenzi, and his providing you with a copy of his own Phantom exposé in the March 2020 pages of the Italian cultural magazine Raropiù, that I discovered you were available to contact and discuss your involvement in the Phantom project.
Russ Klatt: Well, I had an art gallery in Birmingham, Michigan, and through that, a few people reached out over the years.
R.D: So you transitioned from music into the art world.
R.K: I opened my gallery in October of 1974, which is when the whole Phantom project was breaking up. So I sold my Hammond B3 and the Leslies [a combined amp and speaker with a rotating “baffle chamber” usually paired with Hammonds] and took the money and opened a custom picture framing business; creating frames was something I had been doing part-time while in high school. So I opened up this little business and that, over the years, turned into three locations and then I scaled it all back to the one store in Birmingham. Then I expanded that store: I busted out a wall and put a gallery in and ended up in the gallery business for the next twenty years of my existence. Then I got out of it, as 2008 kicked my butt; no one needed custom frames in the middle of an economic downturn. It was very hard to sell such a specific, high end product. So, by 2010, I realized I couldn’t do it anymore; it’s not worth the stress. So I sold it to a 25-year-old kid who ran the business into the ground and it just disappeared.
R.D: That sounds familiar: the vintage vinyl outlet I worked at — and loved — suffered the same “running into the ground” by a new, younger owner. There were some good times, considering it lasted some twenty-plus years, right?
R.K: Oh, yes. There were good times because I always put art and music together, and that turned out to be some really cool events. I opened the gallery with Scott Wilkie’s jazz trio; he’s based in Detroit and plays piano. The last CD he put out was #1 on Amazon’s “Brazilian Jazz” or something like that. There he is, making himself a name these days, and I hired him when he was just a punk going to college; he turned to be quite a guy with a great career.
R.D: What other events did you organize for the gallery?
R.K: I had a lot of art events. My last show was in 1994 with WCSX [94.7 FM], our rock station here in Detroit, with Tom Weschler. Is that a name you know?
R.D: Absolutely. He’s part of the Bob Seger family.
R.K: Well, Tom was our road manager for Phantom. He was Bob Seger’s road manager, as well; he actually quit Seger and came with us. [Another member of the Hideout management team that also worked with Bob Seger: Joe Aramini. He was the road manager for the Walpurgis precursor, Madrigal, as well at Tea; the latter featured Jerry Zubal, a future Ted Pearson associate.] Tom and I go way back, well, too far. It was a kind of a cool deal: Tom was in the store one day and Jack White of the White Stripes comes into the store; we used to do Jack’s framing, as he lived in the area. Kenny Olson, who was the lead guitar player for Kid Rock, well . . . Jack and Kenny are both in my store at two different counters at the same time. And Tom Weschler was there, hanging out, mooching money, and so on. I pointed them out to Tom, “Look who’s out front,” and we were all excited like two, little girl groupies; I introduced Jack and Kenny to one another, as they didn’t know each other, and the four of us sat around, just shootin’ the shit. Anyway, Kenny was there, framing a picture from the Grande [Ballroom].
R.D: Let me guess: Tom took the picture?
R.K: I told Kenny that Tom Weschler, I think, took more pictures of the Grande than anybody else. It was a really nice moment; I felt really good that those guys came to my place to get their framing done. So I said to Tom, “You know what: we need to do a show. You need dig through your stuff.” So we called it “94 Shots of Classic Rock” and we took it to the radio station and pitched it; it was the easiest sell I ever had in my life. WCSX just jumped on it. So we did this two week show and it ended on Dream Cruise Saturday, which is huge here, and my gallery was on Woodward Avenue, where it is held [aka, The Woodward Dream Cruise, the event was inaugurated in August 1995 as the largest, single-day classic car show in the U.S.]. So, it was perfect to do the event; we had three different openings, and it put Tommy on the map. So, I said, “Tom, the next thing you need to do is a coffee table book.” Low and behold, he got together with Gary Graff and they did the Travelin’ Man photo journal about Bob [hard cover in 2009; soft cover in 2010].
R.D: No way! I love that book!
R.K: Yeah, it’s kinda cool, isn’t it? If you’re a Seger fan, you’ll treasure it. I just got one for my sister-in-law who lives in Louisiana and she is a huge Seger fan — and I never knew that. So I got her a copy and had Tommy autograph it to her, just a year ago. After that, things started picking up for him; he posts pictures everyday on Facebook. The last time I saw him, he was living in a hotel; Tom was always “gypsy-like,” always coming and going. Intellectually, Tom is incredibly bright. He has the ability to get to the back stage of some of the biggest people. He knows everybody; he was the road manager for the James Gang and he’s just been everywhere and he’s the nicest guy in the world. I wished he had [financially] succeeded better and could enjoy the fruits of the labor he put out, as he certainly didn’t make much at it.
R.D: This is exactly why I wanted to speak with you. There are those little tidbits I’ve since learned, post-books, such as Detroiter Greg Crockett, who worked as a roadie for Rare Earth, was also involved with Joe Walsh’s Barnstorm and, by 1971, with Ted Nugent’s Amboy Dukes. (For the readers: Crockett cohabited the same Walton Street house/makeshift recording studio as the members of Walpurgis, for a time: when the “black plastic” went up on the windows for the band to start recording, Crockett left to work with Nugent.) I knew that Tom Weschler served as Seger’s road manager; I knew Tom designed The Divine Comedy album cover, but I wasn’t aware he was also Phantom’s road manger, as well as for the James Gang. And am I correct that the first project Tom worked on as a photographer was Seger’s Mongrel?
R.K: He also did Seger’s Seven.
R.D: Those sessions for Seven, that was when the Phantom effort was recorded, correct? Arthur Pendragon, well, Ted Pearson, told me the album was recorded during the downtime of Seger’s sessions. Is that accurate?
R.K: I don’t know about that; the connection between the two albums. So, you spoke with Ted before he died?
R.D: Yes. To reflect a little bit: I transitioned out of architecture; I was a draftsman, into radio broadcasting in the late ’80s. As it turned out, this was right around the same time Ted began working in radio. He already, legally, changed his name to “Arthur Pendragon” by that point. I came to know him for ten years and he was my boss for five years.
R.K: I’ll be damned; I did not know that, he ended up on the radio.
R.D: Yes. He was living in South Florida, where we both worked. He and [his wife] moved down here.
R.K: Sure, I knew his wife.
R.D: Actually, another part of the “plan” was Arthur, and his longtime keyboardist in Pendragon, Bob Ellis, were going to reform Pendragon in Florida. According to Bob’s step daughter, whom I’ve spoken with, told me that they had a falling out and that new version of Pendragon never happened. Anyway, Arthur ended up having two kids in Florida. Sadly, he divorced in 1995; he committed suicide in March of 1999.
R.K: Yeah, my understanding is that Ted’s mother died and he had a hard time with that.
R.D: Right. It was a culmination of things, Russ. The Phantom project from 1974 was reissued on compact disc by CEMA, Capitol’s reissues arm, in 1993.
R.K: Right. The One Way Records release.
R.D: Yes. It was a legit, legal re-release, but Ted retained a lawyer and sued to stop the release — and couldn’t. So that came out. Then, around 1997, thanks to the Internet, he discovered that his Pendragon recordings, that is, the demos from 1977 recorded at Fiddlers Music, were also pirated — along with the Phantom album — starting around 1989, across Europe. (The Ghost imprint on those pirated albums originates out of Italy). So, those two events, along with his mother’s dying and the divorce; I also have to add: Ted, well, Art, started a new relationship, and his girlfriend died in a car accident. What happened: She worked in the hospitality industry and needed a ride home from work. He just had a gig that night and opted not to pick her up. She got a ride with a coworker. The car crashed. He blamed himself for her death.
R.K: Oh, boy.
R.D: So all of this shit piled on him. Ironically, when he committed suicide in March of 1999, it was the 25th anniversary of the release of The Divine Comedy. I’m not sure if that “anniversary’ contributed, but it seems so. It all piled up on him.
R.K: Yeah, I had heard about his suicide. I don’t know what capacity he was with Phantom [the studio-version outgrowth of Walpurgis], but Gary Gawinek; I don’t know if he was our manager, or what. But Punch [Andrews] was our producer, so maybe Gary was our manager, I don’t know. But Gary came into my store one day. He said, “Russ, I’m just stopping by to let you know that Ted committed suicide.” So, I figured I’m getting it right from the horse’s mouth, coming from Gawinek. He and Ted hired me to be in Phantom.
R.D: Yeah. It’s so sad. Myself, and a few of my fellow radio jocks that knew him, were devastated. He was a great boss and great at his job.
R.K: I am glad you told me this. I never knew the whole story. I just knew that Ted’s mother died and he couldn’t deal with it and that’s why he committed suicide. Gary also approached me, at the time, about doing something; getting together Hal Beasley [Harold Breedless] and Jimmy [Jim Roland] and putting some sort of tribute together to Ted, doing all the Phantom stuff as a fundraiser for [his wife], for the kids’ education, but I never heard anymore about that.
R.D: I have spoken with Arthur’s [immediate family]. His son, being a little bit older and more aware, doesn’t like to talk about it. His daughter, on the other hand, was very young, so it doesn’t affect her as deeply and she’s able to speak of it. There is, what little there is, an “estate,” such photographs and promotional materials, as well as recordings. No one in the family is, however, a musician and with their own careers and families. There was a curiosity expressed as to the process of releasing those tapes. I explained that “process” and provided some information about the whole process of “baking,” of preparing and producing those tapes to transfer them — all of which is beyond the family’s experience, or time. So those recordings are lost, forever.
R.K: I think I have reel-to-reels of our rehearsals in Ted’s home studio, which are way cooler than the album. We were such an intense band; it was just incredible for four guys. But I’ve got those reel-to-reels. Greg Miller, who was the assistant engineer at Pampa Recording [in Warren, Michigan], I’ve run into him; he lives over on the Eastside, where I live. I run into him at the yogurt store every once in a while; he thinks he still has some two-inch masters. Now, I don’t know how he would still have them, but he says he does. I don’t know if it’s the whole album, or what. I’m surprised he even has it.
R.D: Would Punch permit the release of those recordings? It’s all water under the bridge at this point; I seriously doubt he would care at this point.
R.K: Yeah, I don’t know. He disliked Ted so much; but I don’t think he’d really care, at this point.
R.D: What exactly was the disdain between Ted and Punch? I never really got the whole story, as everyone paints those events in such broad strokes. According to my conversations with Ted, he worked for Punch at Hideout Productions — even as far as working on Suzi Quatro’s early singles — as an assistant engineer or some other capacity.
R.K: Now, that I don’t know. I never heard that one. I just know, and Tom Weschler was the one who told me about it, how, when Gary Gawinek took the tapes [Ted’s home demos] of Phantom to Punch to “sell it,” he couldn’t tell Punch it was Ted, because he disliked Ted so much. I don’t know why or what happened.
R.D: How was your relationship, considering all that went down, as you mentioned earlier, with Ted?
R.K: Well, I don’t know what your relationship with Ted was; it sounded pretty okay. But man, when we were doing that album. He was one hard ass son of a bitch to get along with.
R.D: You’re not the first to tell me this. Joe Memmer, a member of Ted’s next band, Pendragon, said the reason the band broke up was because of Ted’s irrational behavior. Joe mentioned that once the cocaine showed up, it was all over. (For the readers: Joe, way back, was in the bands the Free, then Shadow, with Dave Gilbert, later of the Rockets. Shadow was on Robert Stigwood’s RSO Records for a while; the singles came out on the imprint, Clean.)
R.K: You’ve heard the name Mike Bailey in all of this?
R.D: Absolutely. Mike was involved with Pendragon in some type of managerial capacity, is my understanding, but not until Pendragon. Now, it seems even earlier.
R.K: Well, when Ted decided that Punch “wasn’t doing enough” for Phantom, he brought in Mike Bailey to be our manager. You can imagine how that went over with Punch. We come to find out that Mike was one of the bigger coke dealers in Oakland County. And Mike didn’t like me because I didn’t do coke. He’d put lines on album covers and pass it around during rehearsals and I’d say, “No, I’ve got a beer going here, I’m fine.” So we never hit it off. And that’s when everything changed: we went from Phantom, the band, to Ted being “The Phantom” — with us as “the backup band” to Ted. It was Mike Bailey who took Ted out to L.A., with Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger, and that’s when it really, really changed. So that’s why Harold, Jimmy and I split, we go, “This is not how it used to be.” We saw the writing on the wall. The worst part was seeing Ted . . . it was terrible how bad those two got: they thought that they could do no wrong, that they were better than everybody else.
R.D: Wow, it seems Punch’s smart market plan, in my opinion — tying it into Jim Morrison’s death — went to Mike’s head. Well, what I do know is, when it came to Ted, there was no love lost when it came to Bob Seger.
R.K: I never knew why, for some reason, Ted totally disliked Bob Seger and always made fun of him. He felt Punch was spending too much time with Seger and that “nobody knows who Seger is” and “he’s an old folk rock guy.” Ted called him “Pete Seeger” [a U.S. folk singer during the ’40s and ’50s] all the time. Ted just really had a problem with Seger. So I’d tell Ted, “Ted, nobody knows who in the hell you are! Let’s get out there and get some exposure.” Then he’d berate me on how cynical I was.
R.D: Wow. I’m shocked. And then, I’m not. So much for my being told that Danny Sugerman called Ted out to L.A. to jam with the Doors.
R.K: Here’s a perfect example of my experience with Ted. I had a Hammond B3 and two Leslie speakers. I had them up in the old house where we’d rehearse and record. This was when things were starting to not be so great; the feeling wasn’t like it when we were both cookin’. Ted was playing through a Fender Twin and he blew his speakers; Ted was going to get it repaired, and so on. Well, we went to rehearse the next time — and my equipment sounded like shit. I couldn’t get any volume out of it, I couldn’t believe it. Wow, it was bad. Now, I kept my Leslies up: I took them to the guy that worked on Ted Nugent’s equipment; he worked on my amps and got more power out of them, and put these two, cool ElectroVoice speakers in. Boy, my two Leslie speakers could shatter your windows. Not long after that, the band broke up. I got all my equipment together and rented a U-Haul [trailer] and took it back to my parents’ house because, well, it was the only place I could store it. So, I started cleaning it all up because, as I mentioned earlier: I was going to sell it to open my frame shop. I open the back of my Leslies and I discovered why my amps sounded like shit: Ted had taken my really expensive, ElectoVoice SRO speakers and replaced them with his two blown speakers [from his Fender Twin].
R.D: Oh, my god. What the hell, Russ?
R.K: Isn’t that being just a blatant prick?
R.D: Wow. That’s not the Ted I came to know, years later. I am sorry to say that I agree: that’s the definition of “being a prick.” To be young and stupid.
R.K: You know, Ted has some nice equipment. He had his Fender Twin and a nice [Gibson] SG Standard. But it was intolerable, just intolerable. I just couldn’t believe somebody in a band could do that to a bandmate. So I took his two blown speakers back to the house one day, and [his future wife] let me in. Ted was out in L.A. or somewhere. Sure as hell: the back of the Twin is open, I look in the back, and I can see my two EVs in there. I took my two speakers out, tossed his blown, two speakers in the corner, and I left. So I got my speakers back. Jimmy and Harold couldn’t believe Ted did that, they go, “Wow, what a son of a bitch to do that.” But that, right there, told me everything I needed to know about Ted Pearson.
R.D: Well, to follow that story, as I remember what Joe Memmer told me: here’s one from Rick Stahl from Wilson Mower Pursuit, who ended up in Ted’s band, Pendragon, for a while.
R.K: Wilson Mower Pursuit? No kidding? They were a good band.
R.D: Definitely. So Rick Stahl tells me Ted, well, by then, Arthur, had one of his “episodes” with a club manager over money; or it may have been with a soundman, but Arthur tossed his beer on the sound board. It might have been at Harpos, I can’t recall. Anyway, Rick, like you, got to the moment, as did Joe Memmer, to where enough was enough.
R.K: Yeah, Ted did Harpos, a lot, with his next band.
R.D: Well, after that beer-on-the-soundboard episode, not any more. The way Rick and Joe tell it, it became increasingly difficult for Pendragon to get booked. Speaking of previous bands, what groups are in your past?
R.K: When I was really young, I was in a band, Downtown Clergy. We played all the sock hops at the Catholic Churches; that seemed to be who had all of the sock hops. We were together for six years as junior and high school kids, so it was pretty amazing we were together that long. Anyway, back to you mentioning Wilson Mower Pursuit: their drummer [Bob Franco] — who was ten years older than us — was a friend of our manager. He would come over and give us tips, telling us how to properly end a song, to “do this and do that,” just the nicest guy. Then, years later, to discover Wilson’s lead singer, Stoney, you know, Shawn Murphy, who ended up singing backup for Eric Clapton and Seger, was the lead singer in Little Feat for years [joined in 1993 and remained for 15 years, until 2007].
Madrigal, L to R: Ted Pearson (in front of the tree), drummer Jim Roland (in vest), and the Wells brothers, Howard and Russ. Joe Aramini, part of the Punch Andrews management team (and came to manage and produce Bob Seger for several years), managed both Poetic Justice (see above) and Madrigal.
— Courtesy of the Pearson-Pendragon family archives.
R.D: As well as working with Meatloaf, ex of the Popcorn Blizzard, and the Stoney and Meatloaf project. (For the readers: Ted Pearson’s first band, Madrigal, which later morphed into Walpurgis, shared bills with the Popcorn Blizzard, Wilson Mower Pursuit, as well as Bob Seger during 1969 at Something Different, the Silverbell Hideout, and Notre Dame High School, which hosted many “sock hop” events; those events at Notre Dame were hosted by WXYZ-FM DJ Dave Prince.)
R.K: Stoney’s up for, uh, I don’t know if they had the awards yet, “Female Blues Singer of the Year” [The Independent Blues Awards 2020, in five categories] for her band [The Shawn Murphy Band]. Now, I never had the pleasure, but everybody I know that knows her has a kind word for her, they just love her. She’s supposed to be something else. That’s just a sidebar to what a “sweetheart” Ted was to me.
R.D: Well, I can tell you, as I told Joe Memmer and Rick Stahl: Ted excised all of his demons by the time he got to Florida. He was the complete opposite of what each of you told me about your times with him. He really mellowed out. Was it because of his having two children: probably. As I said, he worked in radio for ten years before his death. During that time he had a couple of cover bands, the one I remember was called Lonewolf. They played dive bars, just local watering holes or raw bars, you know, that specialized in serving raw oysters and clams. He didn’t pursue music, as far as originals, beyond that. As I said, the idea of Bob Ellis and Ted reactivating Pendragon in Florida fell apart. Honestly, I don’t think his wife, who I never had the pleasure of meeting, but you have, wanted him to. Considering Ted got divorced in 1995, I have a feeling that the 1993 CD release — and the legal avenues he began in that regard, stirring up that past — didn’t sit well with her.
R.K: So, was he on the air, in engineering, or what?
R.D: When I first met him, he was on air, as well as serving as the station’s production director. He got his job in radio by doing handyman work. He was doing handiwork, painting the house, I believe, for Joe Nuckols. Joe was this entrepreneur who’d get into various businesses and decided he wanted to buy a radio station. So, knowing Ted’s experiences in music, he hired Ted to be his chief announcer and production director. That’s how I met him. Then our station was purchased by another company and relocated, and co-located, with another station. So we both ended up on the air of this other station, well, two more stations, of which he was the program director for one of them. No radio school or broadcasting degree, required: just a lot of Detroit sweat. He stumbled into radio completely by accident and was very good at, with his nice, baritone set of pipes. But, like I said, he was a different person in Florida.
R.K: Well, that’s good to hear. I am glad he found the other side.
R.D: I’ve had the pleasure to speak at length with Paul Cervenek, who worked alongside, as you did, with Harold Breedless and Jim Roland in Walpurgis — only during Paul’s time, the band was known as Madrigal. Paul states he knew you prior to your working with Ted Pearson. Paul mentioned he also knew Tom Weschler, pretty well, although it has been several years since he’s seen either of you.
R.K: Paul Cervenek. How in the hell did you get a hold of Paul? Is he down in Florida, as well?
R.D: No, he’s still living in Michigan and plays out in his own cover band, now and then. He used to have, and still should, a couple of videos on You Tube with his cover trio. As far as finding Paul, I believe it was Jerry Zubal who networked me to Paul. He suggested I speak to Paul, as Paul was, prior to you, the keyboardist in the first version of the band, then known as Madrigal. Jerry’s band Tea, for a while known as Poetic Justice, did shows with them, back when.
R.K: I had heard that, too, that Paul worked with Ted at one time. And he remembered who I was?
R.D: Yes, both you and Tom Weschler.
R.K: Well, I’ll be darned. Paul was the older brother of a kid I went to high school with. I had just gotten into this goofy little band in junior high. “You can be in the band, if you play keyboards,” they tell me. Well, I was a saxophone player; I don’t know how to play keyboards. But I went home and talked to my old man who was very supportive about music. So we got a little Farfisa Organ and an amp and he tells me “take lessons.” Who in the hell is going to teach me “Light My Fire” and stuff like that? So I talked to Cervenek’s little brother and he tells me Paul can teach me all that. So he would come over and sit at the console organ my dad had in the living room and he’d teach me two or three songs that the band was going to work on that week. Low and behold, Paul got me to the point that I could play the keys, pretty good. Well, you know I was playing keys with Ted after Paul, so I stepped up to the plate. I always liked Paul. He was just a character and the nicest guy. Ironically, my wife’s son and his wife were working with a real estate guy, and they asked me, “Do you know Paul Cervenek”? So I am like, “How in the hell would you know Paul?” Turns out: Paul just sold their house! I couldn’t believe it.
R.D: That’s amazing. I live for these “six degrees of” stories.
R.K: Paul and I have not seen each other since I was in 8th grade, back in the mid-‘60s. But Paul was a character and he was in some really good bands around Detroit that played the Grande and stuff like that. But he taught me how to play “Light My Fire” and “Good Lovin’” and all those things back in the ’60s. So I got that gig in that stupid band, because of Paul. Just a cute little story, you know?
“This was taken in my basement, probably circa 1966–1968, with the band Good Tuesday (aka Echoes from a Broken Mirror). I am the blond guy slouching against the wall, third from left. We performed at various teen night clubs in the Detroit area, primarily those operated by Ed “Punch” Andrews, in partnership with the late Mike Quatro (Suzi’s brother), such as the Crows Nest and Silverbell (a former ski lodge near Oakland University).”
— Paul Cervenek
R.D: Okay, I have one for you. Paul Cervenek provided me with a picture one of his bands, Echoes from a Broken Mirror, which became Good Tuesday, but prior to that, as you know, he was in Madrigal with Harold Breedless . . . by the way, is his name Breedless or Breedly (Breadly)?
R.K: Well, I always knew him as “Beasley” back then.
R.D: Okay, so Paul proceeds to tell me he’s in the band with Harold and the Wells brothers, Russ and Howard. For whatever reason, Ted didn’t want to be the lead singer anymore. [Russ Klatt laughs robustly.] So, Ted brings in this guy, well, a character named “Danny” into the band who, according to Paul, reminded him of “Charles Manson’s brother.” [Russ laughs, again.] Things got, per Paul, “too weird” with Danny, and he decided he had enough and got out of it. Paul had no idea who Danny was, where he came from, where Ted found him, or where he went, after.
R.K: You know, that’s weird, because there’s this guy in Detroit, “Danny D,” whose claim to fame, up here, is that he looks just like Rod Stewart; dresses like him and everything, if that’s a “claim to fame.” He can’t carry a tune, but he’s always booked; plays out all the time. His name is Danny D’szabo or something like that. I wonder if it’s Danny D., from all those years ago, with Paul.
R.D: I’ll have to look into that, deeper, as Danny is one of those missing Madrigal/Walpurgis members that no one knows or what happened to him. Then, there’s one more from Paul, a tale that goes back to your story about Ted and the speakers: Madrigal had a standing gig at one of Punch’s clubs and kept the equipment in the back. So, one night, Paul goes in the back and sees his equipment was obviously moved. Turns out, Danny rented out his equipment to another keyboardist.
R.K: Unbelievable. Now, I had the pleasure to play with a guy named Marty Blair. Marty was one of the best drummers I ever heard and self taught. He was the local Coca-Cola delivery guy, you know, the ones with the big trucks, and he was built like a wrestler because he slung cases of coke all the time. Now, Marty was a little out there; I think Agent Orange must have hit him, or something. Every once in a while, he’d get really strange, but he was the nicest fellow. I can’t recall how we hooked up; nonetheless, we played together for quite a while and he was, so he said, before I got in the band: a Hammond player. I said, “Marty, as good as a drummer you are, what do you mean you’re a Hammond player?” He tells me, “Yeah, well, I didn’t like doing it, so I switched to drums.” I imagine this isn’t a name you’ve come across, R.D., in the Phantom history.
R.D: No, I haven’t. This is a new, obscure Detroit musician for me. Hopefully, when this goes to press, someone will remember Marty.
R.K: Yeah, Marty Blair, he lives in Clarkston, Michigan. So, we ended up playing together for a while. But he ended up having to drop out; we’d take a break from practicing and he’d fall asleep. The guy is just busting his ass working all day and he decided he just couldn’t do it anymore. So he started playing drums at one of those non-denominational churches that had the “big band” and everything; he did that because he could play in the morning, instead of the night.
R.D: Did you know or were you friendly with Chris Ruetenik, who replaced you in Walpurgis on keyboards? Chris would go on to form the band Father, which became Art in America, and he’d become professionally known as Chris Flynn. He was in the band, after you, for about six months. I am assuming, out of Punch’s stable, Ted reverted to the Walpurgis name.
R.K: Sorry to say, I do not know Chris. Now, I heard, and I don’t know how right this is: When Ted started with the nonsense and brought Mike Bailey into the band, Punch sued Ted for breach of contract. None of the guys in the band, me, Harold and Jimmy, were ever contractually signed to the band. I got in, and the first thing the band did, well, we learned all the tunes, but the song I played Hammond on [“Tales from a Wizard”], we just went right into the studio [Pampa] and cut that right way, to finish the album. There was such a panic to do everything, as Punch wanted to get us out on the road. Now, I was told, we were booked, in March 1974, on [NBC-TV’s] The Midnight Special and that was going to be the band’s debut [the “Calm Before the Storm b/w Black Magic/White Magic” single would be performed]. But everything just got so crazy with Punch suing Ted, Ted was suing Punch, and Punch got some sort of injunction where Ted couldn’t play out, professionally, for the next five years [so until 1979]. Now, again, this didn’t affect Jimmy, Harold or I because we weren’t contractually signed to the band. What did you hear or know about that?
R.D: Well, from Ted, and a few others confirmed: Phantom was to appear on The Midnight Special, but not to the extent you’ve told me. What I gleaned from others is that, as you explained, Ted’s attitude screwed it all up and lawsuits were going back and forth. Then there’s the story that Elektra, the Doors’ label, sued or filed an injunction on Capitol, which killed the album’s sales momentum, but I can’t find any legal document, evidence of that fact. Now, what I also learned from Ted is that Phantom was supposed to go on the road as Bob Seger’s opening act on the Seven tour.
R.K: Exactly. The way it was going to work, as Ted explained it to the band: We were going on the road for 48-weeks to open for Bob. When we weren’t opening for Seger, we were opening for Bachman-Turner Overdrive. So, Ted charts it out on a map, one day: “We’re starting up here, in Winnipeg . . . we’re going to come down this coast, and up here . . . and we’re going to play in Florida, and then we’ll end up in L.A. with this ‘big event,’” and so on.
R.D: Wow. That’s a lot to take in, being just out of high school.
R.K: Yeah, Ted’s talking to a 19-year-old kid, so my head could barely fit through the door. I was so excited, with his filling our heads with shit. Oh, and then, after all that about the 48-week tour and B.T.O, we walk in and sit in the dining room; we’d sit around the table during breaks because we’d rehearse in the living room, and there’s Jaguar and Mercedes brochures. So Ted passed them around and says, “I want you to pick the model and color of either of the cars you want, they’re going to be a gift to you, from Punch.” Obviously, that never happened.
R.D: It was all too good to be true.
R.K: Yeah, I don’t know if that was a ploy to keep us in the band or what. The whole thing was weird. So, I came home that night and talked to my parents because, at that time, I moved from my apartment and moved in with my parents, since I was going out on the road for a year. I tell them, “You won’t believe this, but I’m going to get a Jaguar before this thing is over.”
END
Join us for Part 2 as we continue to speak with Phantom keyboardist, Russ Klatt.
