Pendragon: The Lost Album and other Lost Rockers of the Great Lakes
A second in a series on Detroit’s lost rockers
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When most music aficionados see the name “Pendragon,” as it relates to music, they immediately think of a somewhat notable, mid-eighties neo-progressive-rock outfit with an equivalent moniker founded by Nick Barrett and Peter Geer in Stroud, Gloucesterhsire, Britain. Connoisseurs of the progressive rock and proto-metal obscure epoch of the late sixties and early seventies will think of Mike Dixon and Mike Bean’s Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A-based Pendragon, who issued an independent, fuzz-tone classic with 1969’s “Never Gonna Go Back b/w Desert of Time,” which received national distribution (ironically, when you tie this all into the Phantom’s Divine Comedy album from 1974) through Capitol Records.
The musical phantom this article references is an unknown band (at least outside of the Great Lakes area in the U.S) from Detroit that birthed in Los Angeles as early as 1976 and vanished into the ethers sometime in 1983. In Detroit, Pendragon’s recognition as an original rock unit, which issued the 1978 single “Lonewolf b/w Storms,” and as their alter ego as one of the States’ premiere Doors tribute bands — even receiving a mention in a Rolling Stone 1980 Jim Morrison article — frequently served as a “go to” opening band and played its own, numerous headlining gigs at the Motor City’s premiere rock club in the 1980s: Harpos; a major achievement considering the band had no support from a major label. (This feat was also achieved by Dee Snider and the pre-MTV stardom Twisted Sister, who sold out 3,000-seat venues in the New York State area without label support.)
For those not from Detroit, so as to understand the magnitude of Pendragon’s achievement: The iconic Harpos wasn’t some hole-in-the-wall, cockroach infested, off-the-beaten path rock dive with disgusting, sticky-floored bathrooms. Designed in ostentatious Art Moderne architecture and opened in 1939, the one-time vaudeville venue and theatre was converted into a rock club in 1974 with a two-thousand seat capacity. Not only did the venue serve as the location for live albums and concert DVDs by Warrant, Corrosion of Conformity, and Black Label Society, Harpos also served as a major tour stop in Detroit for basic down-and-dirty, working-man rock bands, each who sold out the venue: U.S hard-rock act Riot (“Swords and Tequila”), a reconstituted Humble Pie, Rochester, New York’s Duke Jupiter (“I’ll Drink to You, “Little Lady”), St. Louis’ Headeast (“Never Been Any Reason,” “Since You’ve Been Gone”), Krokus (“Screaming in the Night,” “Eat the Rich”), Zebra (“Tell Me What You Want,” “Who’s Behind the Door”), Pittsburgh’s Donnie Iris (“Ah, Leah,” “Love is like a Rock”) and Iron City Houserockers (“Friday Night”), Frankie and the Knockouts (“Sweetheart”), Shooting Star (“Hang on for Your Life”), and countrified/new wave-inspired rock prodigy Billy Burnett (“Honey Hush,” “Tear it Up.”).
When musical tides shifted and jeans ’n’ t-shirt hard-rock fell out of favor, Harpos became the epicenter for the thrash/speed and glam-metal movements in the mid-to-late eighties with appearances by Megedeth, Exciter, Detroit’s speed-metal kings, Seduce (MTV Headbanger’s Ball hit with “Crash Landing,” 1988; opened Detroit shows for Saxon, Accept, and Girlschool), Los Angeles’ Y&T (“Meanstreak” and “Summertime Girls”), Carmine Appice’s King Kobra (“Iron Eagle (Never Say Die),” from the 1985 action film, Iron Eagle), Coney Hatch (“Hey Operator”), and Ratt (“Round and Round”). Also making multiple appearances at Harpos was the then hot, chart-topping Huey Lewis and the News with four sold-out shows between 1982 and 1985 — three of those shows in which Pendragon served as the opening act — on the request of Huey Lewis, who was a fan of the band.
Detroit’s Pendragon also serves as a puzzle piece in this writer’s deeper investigation regarding Jim Morrison’s phantasmal doppelganger from 1974 in the Ghosts of Jim Morrison, the Phantom of Detroit, and the Fates of Rock ’n’ Roll. However, when it comes to the cackling witches manning those spinning wheels of fate, always in a perpetual need of fresh threads, no band is immune to the looms.
Detroit’s Pendragon wasn’t the only working-man, jeans & t-shirt rock band unable to break out nationally from their Great Lakes-Midwest-Northeast touring region encompassing New York (Buffalo and Rochester), Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh and Erie), Ohio (Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Columbus), Illinois (Chicago and Champaign), Indianapolis, Indiana, Detroit, and Toronto — then seen their careers completely vanish with the advent of MTV and the rise of the more theatrical hair-metal styles dominating the cable upstart, with flashy L.A glam-rockers Quiet Riot, Ratt, and Motley Crue quickly dominating commercial AOR (Album Oriented Rock) radio. Not every band is destine to be the next Cheap Trick, REO Speedwagon, or Survivor out of Rockford, Champaign, and Berwyn, Illinois, respectively; sometimes you are dealt the fate of Rochester New York’s Duke Jupiter — or worse, Detroit’s Pendragon.
Even the remnants of one of the seventies most successful rock bands and Detroit’s most successful musical export, Grand Funk Railroad, were unable to achieve any sales success or radio airplay in the shadows of the youthful, harder-edged rock spearheaded by Van Halen’s 1978 blistering debut; a harder rock-style consolidated by the dominance of AC/DC with their back-to-back hits of Highway to Hell (1979), Back in Black (1980), and the U.S Billboard number one album, For Those about to Rock We Salute You (1981). Even AC/DC’s Dirty Deeds Done Dirty Cheap, a 1981 American reissue of their 1976 Australian-only album, featuring the late Bon Scott, crushed the competition on the American charts.
Following the breakup of GFR, guitarist/lead vocalist Mark Farner failed with two Atlantic solo albums: Mark Farner (1977) and No Frills (1978). Meanwhile, drummer/lead vocalist Don Brewer (sings lead on “We’re an American Band,” GFR’s #1 1973 hit single), Mel Schacher and Craig Frost formed Flint, which issued one ignored album on Columbia Records. Farner and Brewer, with new members, reactivated Grand Funk Railroad for two ignored albums on Warner Bros./Full Moon: Grand Funk Lives (1981) and What’s Funk (1983), with the “Queen Bee” single featured in the animated rock-flick, Heavy Metal.
As with GFR, the scraps of Cleveland’s the Raspberries (Beatles-like precursors to the power-pop brilliance of the Knack) were unable to repeat their initial chart successes or match the later, (brief) solo success of their ex-frontman, Eric Carmen. After their departure from the Raspberries, Dave Smalley and Jim Bonfanti formed Dynamite with future Michael Stanley Band keyboardist, Kevin Raleigh, and recorded an unreleased album. Meanwhile, ex-Berry Wally Bryson co-founded the harder-rocking Tattoo in 1976 with Thom Mooney, formerly with the Nazz. (Led by Todd Rundgren, the first concert for Philadelphia’s the Nazz was as the opening act for the Doors in 1967; the Nazz issued the brilliant, psych-fuzz single “Open My Eyes” in 1968.) Although formed in Los Angeles, all of Tattoo’s members hailed from Cleveland and signed with Motown’s new rock label, Prodigal, which was an outgrowth of their defunct Rare Earth Records (which had chart success with Detroit’s Rare Earth; another artist on the Prodigal roster was Michael Quatro, the brother of Detroit’s Suzi Quatro).
Tattoo in tatters, Wally Bryson returned to his commercial pop-rock roots alongside New Yorker’s Gene Cornish and Dino Danelli, formerly of the Rascals/the Young Rascals (#1 late-Sixties hits “Good Lovin’” and “Groovin’”; back on the road in 2018), to form the poptastic Fotomaker. Issuing an eponymous debut and Vis-a’-vis in (1978) and Transfer Station (1979) for Atlantic — along with a brilliantly radio friendly, yet ignored single, “Where Have You Been All My Life,” Bryson’s band failed to expand on their regional, Midwestern acceptance. (Another post-Rascals/pre-Fotomaker hard-rock experiment by Cornish and Danelli, Bulldog, also failed to find any commercial inroads.)
Faring better commercially was Cleveland’s the Michael Stanley Band. MSB’s fifth album achieved national recognition, courtesy of the Kevin Raleigh-penned and sung Top 40 and MTV video hit, “He Can’t Love You,” from Heartland (1980). Their follow up singles of “In the Heartland” and “Falling in Love Again” from Northcoast (1981) were unable to consolidate their success, rendering the Buckeye rockers as a one-hit wonder.
Inspired by the Raspberries, the Shoes were another Midwest band kneeling at the altar of the Beatles. Headed by the Murphy brothers, Jeff and John, their three Elektra albums, Present Tense (1979), Tongue Twister (1981), and Boomerang (1982) were unable to ride the new-wave craze inspired by the Knack, Translator, and the Plimsouls into national, mainstream acceptance. (Jeff eventually found success as a producer for the internationally successful Material Issue, which issued the early-nineties, alternative-rock hits International Pop Overthrow (1991) and Destination Universe (1992), in addition to the radio hits of “Valerie Loves Me” and “Kim the Waitress.”)
After the Nazz, Thom Mooney and Robert “Stewkey” Antoni, along with a pre-Cheap Trick Rick Nielson and Tom Petersson, were part of Fuse out of Rockford, Illinois, which issued one self-titled album for Epic in 1970. The drummer for Fuse, Chip Greenman, resurfaced with Cheap Trickesque power-popsters the Names, which existed from 1977 to 1980. (Greenman turned down an offer to join Cheap Trick; Mr. Bun E. Carlos got the job.) Unable to secure a record deal, the Names issued one independent private-press single, “Why Can’t It Be,” later preserved on a Rhino D.I.Y Compilation. (The Names are remembered by rock-flick enthusiasts (such as this writer) for writing the soundtrack and acting as faux shock-rockers the Clowns in the 1982 (shot in 1980) direct-to-video slasher-flick, Terror on Tour — helmed by exploitation director Don Edmunds, known for the Ilsa film series. Staring alongside Chip Greenman, as the Clowns’ manager, was Larry Thomas, respectably known as the “Soup Nazi” from NBC-TV’s, Seinfeld.)
While the hit albums and singles of Cheap Trick and REO Speedwagon created several royalty generating classic-rock radio staples, classic-hits radio remembers Survivor as a one-hit wonder; but it was a one-hit wonderdom that evaded fellow regioners Pezband, Iron City Houserockers, Donnie Iris, Dakota, the Boyzz, the B’zz, and Styx-inspired pomp/prog-rockers, Starcastle. (Fronted by ex-REO Speedwagon vocalist Terry Luttrell, Starcastle issued four albums in the late seventies, along with a minor-charting single, “Lady of the Lake.”)
Before Survivor’s 1982 #1, “Eye of the Tiger” (written for the film Rocky III), leader Jim Peterik shared stages in the Chicago, Illinois, area with fellow locals, Chicago, and became a one-hit wonder with his horn-affected assemblage, Ides of March, and their #2 1970 hit, “Vehicle.” It was not until November 1981 that Peterik returned to the U.S Top 40 with “Poor Man’s Son” from Survivor’s second album, Premonition (produced by Artie Ripp; Billy Joel’s and Neil Merryweather’s first manager). (If not for the song finding a fan in Sylvester Stallone, who wanted a similar-sounding theme song for his film, Survivor may have faded into obscurity, as so many of the region’s bands who managed either minor-charting singles or no hit singles at all.)
One of those criminally non-charting, no-hit wonders was Chicago’s Pezband. Pouring the tangy, delectable goes-down-like-gum drops singles of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” and “Stop! Wait a Minute” into radio speakers, they were cut from the same skinny-tie power-pop scene as the Knack (then killing it in 1979 with “My Sharona” and “Good Girls Don’t”). Their three albums released through Passport: 1977’s Pez Band, 1978’s Laughing in the Dark, and 1979’s Cover to Cover, and two live EPs, 30 Seconds over Schaumburg and Too Old Too Soon, soured on the tongues of indifferent American radio programmers. Favorable appearances on NBC’s Today Show and tours with Fleetwood Mac and Supertramp also failed at exposing the band to national, Cheap Trickesque proportions. (Post-break up: Pezband lead vocalist Mimi Betinis teamed with ex-Cheap Trick bassist Tom Petersson in a failed band; Pezband appears on Rhino D.I.Y power-pop compilations alongside the Names.)
While Pittsburgh’s Iron City Houserockers and Donnie Iris found minor radio and video success through constant regional touring — just as Pendragon was gaining support from its Detroit base during 1978 to 1983 — lead guitarist Jerry Hludizik and lead singer Bill Kelly worked the Northwestern Pennslyvania club scene looking for their next hit.
As did Donnie Iris — who, leading the Jaggerz, had a #2 1970 hit with “The Rapper,” then vanished from the charts until his 1980 solo hit, “Ah, Leah” — Hludizik and Kelly had a #17 1971 hit with “Timothy,” as the Bouys (written by Rupert Holmes, who had his own 1979 hit, “Escape (The Pina Colada Song),” which reached #1 on the U.S Billboard Charts). (Donnie Iris was also a one-time member (non-recording) of another Pittsburgh one-hit wonder, Wild Cherry, which had a 1976 million-selling single, “Play that Funky Music,” still spinning on U.S classic-hits radio stations.)
Eventually, Hludizik and Kelly co-founded the Jerry-Kelly Band in 1978 with Chicago’s drummer, Danny Seraphine; the Chicago association led to the release of Somebody Else’s Dream on Epic. Rechristened as Dakota — at record company and management insistence (because of the success of the geographically-christened bands Kansas and Boston) — the band also issued a self-titled album featuring a quickly vanished single and Billboard #78 charter, “If It Takes All Night” (produced by Seraphine), in 1980. (As with the Pendragon confusion: not to be confused with the British pop-band Dakota, in existence from 2007 to 2010.)
Dakota’s minor-chart placing resulted through their exposure as the opening act on Queen’s 35-date The Game Tour — through Bill and Jerry’s friend, and Queen employee, Michael Stahl. Disagreements between Columbia Records (CBS/Epic) and the band Chicago regarding Seraphine’s dual-memberships led to Dakota’s fallout with the label. Seraphine continued with Dakota on Runaway (MCA 1983), which featured Toto’s keyboardist Steve Porcaro, and noted Heart and Eddie Money session guitarist Richie Zito. Failing to produce another hit with this third album, Dakota faded into obscurity.
Meanwhile, out of their Chicago home base, another band chugging along the long road to stardom was the down-and-dirty biker-rock band, the Boyzz. Led by the bluesy growl of Dirty Dan Buck, they issued one Blood, Sweat, and Tears-horn-flavored album, Too Wild Too Tame (1978), and opened shows for Aerosmith and Cheap Trick, where supporters Meatloaf and Ian Hunter (of Mott the Hoople) would show up for impromptu jams.
As with Arthur “The Phantom” Pendragon facing a lack of success and changing times in music with his Walpurgis endeavors, thus developing a streamlined pop-rock sound for his next band, Pendragon, the Boyzz guitarist Joey Tafoya, keyboardist Anatole Halinkovich, and bassist Dave Angel teamed with late-seventies, ex-Steppenwolf members Tom Holland and Steven Riley to adopt a more commercial songwriting approach (with hints of cock-rock and dashes of power pop and new-wave inspiration) with the abbreviated B’zz. Their lone album, Get Up Get Angry (Epic 1982), scored a minor MTV title-track video hit that failed to translate into a national radio hit.
(Steven Riley, previously with Indianapolis, Indiana, pomp-rockers Roadmaster, who were discovered by ex-Nazz frontman Todd Rundgren and recorded four Mercury albums, moved onto stints with Keel and W.A.S.P, and was a co-founder of hair-metal stalwarts, L.A Guns. While Roadmaster failed to find success beyond the Midwest market, Roadmaster’s bassist, Toby Myers, became a mainstay member of fellow Midwesterner John Cougar Mellencamp’s band; Myers also appeared as “Luke” in the Mellencamp-directed movie, Falling from Grace. As for Riley: he played in Steppenwolf alongside onetime Mitch Ryder’s solo band keyboardist, Brett Tuggle, and guitarist Ron “Rocket” Ritchotte.)
The moral of these tales of the obscure permeating the Great Lakes region of the U.S: When it comes to recording contracts and record deals, musicians must be careful for what they wish for: musicians can only payback record company advances to create albums when said albums sell and produce hits — or they are left deep in debt (record labels are actually “banks” issuing “loans,” after all). In the midst of all these aforementioned, Midwestern bands wishing for that “hit,” there was Pendragon (not Phantom, as many fascinated with the Phantom of 1974 believe) with Arthur Pendragon rubbing his crystal ball for a deal that never materialized: Pendragon dissolved in late 1983.
However, after the Phantom’s Divine Comedy fiasco of 1974, the Phantom made his own luck by self-financing and independently recording an album, sometime in late 1977 (based on songs copyrighted in 1976), prior to the arrival of ex-Rockicks guitarist Jerry Zubal (see the article “Sometimes you’re Kiss . . . and sometimes you’re Rockicks,” on my Medium page) to form a band proper. That self-titled debut album — by Pendragon — sadly, became a victim of the European record piracy industry. Just how an album recorded in Detroit crossed an ocean to Italy to be pirated as Phantom: The Lost Album — a cheapjack cash grab to leech off early-nineties pirated represses of Phantom’s Divine Comedy: Part 1 — is anyone’s guess.
So the next time your bopping and rocking on You Tube checking out tunes, and you come across The Lost Album, just remember the real name of the band is Pendragon, and yes, the Phantom of 1974 was responsible for the record. So remember Arthur Pendragon and raise a cold one for him, will ya? Honor Art, my old radio brother — and all the lost rockers chronicled in this article — as the Kings of Air that they dreamed and deserved to be.
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Pendragon in 1978 with the songs “Lone Wolf” and “Storms,” along with “Kat of the Amazon” and “Come to the Sea,” captured live at Bentley’s in Detroit.
Learn more about the man behind Pendragon by learning of his past with this article about Walpurgis, the band responsible for Phantom’s Divine Comedy.
R.D Francis is the writer of The Ghosts of Jim Morrison, the Phantom of Detroit, and the Fates of Rock ’n’ Roll and Tales from a Wizard: The Oral History of Walpurgis, both books explore the life and times of the musician responsible for the mysterious 1974 Jim Morrison “solo album,” Phantom’s Divine Comedy: Part 1 — and came to replace Jim Morrison in the Doors.
You can learn more about the Phantom’s career and book purchasing information by visiting the Facebook Author’s Page for R.D Francis.