The band’s longtime friend and resident historian Mike Jann remembered the Minnesota guys’ sudden transformation: “They had to use an article we clipped out of that listed all the different surf jargon of the time.” “I needed it back then.”Īll around age 21 at the time they hit the charts, the Trashmen had been playing together in various bands since attending high school in Robbinsdale and north Minneapolis.Īfter guitarist Tony Andreason got out of the service in 1962, they took a road trip to California to soak up the sunny surf-rock sound just starting to take off - which they brought back and played in local ballrooms and teen centers. “I cashed mine,” Reed recalled with a laugh. 4 hit in Billboard got you in those days.
Most curious of all, a check made out for a whopping $1.88 hangs in one of the poster frames - the first royalty the band members received for “Surfin’ Bird.” Winslow saved it to show what a No. Another wall features mid-’60s posters for their concerts in Midwest ballrooms with the likes of Fats Domino and Jan & Dean. One wall has their old album covers from the Soma Records label, including the original 1964 “Surfin’ Bird” LP. Winslow’s basement is the nearest thing to an official Trashmen museum. “The song keeps getting used in the most random ways, which is good for us,” said Bob Reed, the bassist, over midday coffee at the kitchen table in Winslow’s house in Ham Lake. Thanks to legal action in the 1980s that got them back some - but not all - of the rights to their hit song, they all now receive recording royalty payments alongside their Social Security checks. “They’re cult rock stars to a lot of people around the world.”
“I don’t think the Trashmen guys have any idea how important they are,” said Dickerson. They also just put out their first record in 25 years, a collaboration with respected California retro-surf guitar player Deke Dickerson. They went on to lead remarkably normal lives with families and respectable jobs, including financial planner and IT technician.įive decades later, these retired grandpas are being invited to play one of the hippest local club gigs of the year. Take three of your wisecracking, Minnesotan-talking uncles with wire-rim glasses, gray beards and anti-Obama bumper stickers and imagine them as onetime rock stars, and you’ll get an idea of what the Trashmen are like now.Īlong with their drummer and primary singer Steve Wahrer, who died of cancer in 1989, the guys rode the wave of their raucous if ridiculous hit for three years before initially calling it quits in 1967.
0 kommentar(er)
