The Almost Famous Psych-Pop Band From Yale–The Morning

The Early Days

The Morning was a folk-rock band that formed inauspiciously in 1967, rehearsing in the Branford Buttery and the Hendrie Hall basement.  Over the next few years we performed with world-class artists—and missed a few opportunities for fame and fortune.

At the beginning, we jammed with lots of talented musicians, including Doug Voorhies (’69 CC) on keyboard, but the lineup solidified as a guitar band with Mat Kastner on lead guitar (originally ’69 SY, later ’70), myself on drums (’69 SM), Bruce Samuels on bass (’70 SM), Mark Pines—our ringleader—on rhythm guitar (’70 DC), and Randy Burns, a popular singer-songwriter in Greenwich Village, on lead vocals.

The band started out playing blues covers at the Exit Coffeehouse on College Street, as well as occasional Yale mixers. As the band developed its own style, we were able to score coffee house gigs in New York City at Gerde’s Folk City and the Night Owl Cafe. Gerde’s was once home to Dylan, Judy Collins, and Peter, Paul, & Mary while the Night Owl had featured Jimi Hendrix, Lovin’ Spoonful, and James Taylor. We were awestruck by the caliber of musicianship in the Village, and it pushed us to get better fast.

Summer of Love

We decided to move to New York for the summer of ’67, even if that meant roughing it for a while.  I spent a few nights under the bushes in Tompkins Square Park—a habit I’m glad I gave up—and then moved into the back room of a recording studio where I slept on top of a bass amp that had “Bob Dylan” stenciled on it.

We managed to do some recording with Richard Alderson, Dylan’s sound engineer, and emerged with a decent tape of ourselves.  Soon we got to play benefits with some of our favorite NY underground artists, such as Tim Buckley and Richie Havens—then landed a steady gig at the Night Owl.

Later that summer we almost signed with Herb Cohen—manager of Frank Zappa, Alice Cooper, and Lenny Bruce before his death—but I can’t quite remember why we didn’t.  This would become a pattern for us.

When September 1967 rolled around we were sorely tempted to stay in New York but decided to return to classes.  Back in New Haven we played weekends at local teen clubs and Yale mixers.  At that point we started using a trippy light show by Rouffignac Harmony—Jon Rubin (’69 JE), Stephen Record (’69 JE), Jack Bagriansky (’69 TD), and Howie Geduldig (’70 TD)—which transformed a Morning gig into a multisensory “experience,” akin to what was happening at the Fillmore in San Francisco.  (See story, left; click to expand.)

For a while our music was labeled “acid folk,” “psychedelic rock,” or “psych-pop” (whatever that meant). But our New Haven shows began attracting lots of townies, especially of the female variety, which noticeably improved our social lives.

Taking It More Seriously

By late 1967 New York was calling again and The Morning started commuting on weekends to play the Café Au Go Go and other clubs. By 1968 we were performing at the Electric Circus with The Grateful Dead and at the Bitter End with a relatively unknown Joni Mitchell.  Joni suggested we record her songs, but inexplicably (and rather imprudently) we didn’t follow up.  Later that year Judy Collins had a Top 10 smash with “Both Sides Now,” Joni’s first hit as a songwriter.

The trip back and forth between New Haven and New York in 1968 became a tad disorienting for us.  During the week we lived in our residential colleges of course.  But during the weekend we lived in a rock & roll crash pad in New Jersey—frequently jamming all night with members of The Grateful Dead, Blood Sweat and Tears, or Buffalo Springfield, after finishing our club appearances.

Our “home” was a four-story castle in Englewood rented by Mark Dronge, the VP of Guild Guitars, for free use by the major bands playing New York at the time.  Dronge had taken The Morning under his wing by then and indefinitely loaned us Guild equipment (instruments and amplifiers) that band members possess to this day.  He also bought us a Chieppo school bus which we painted in bright colors and retrofitted to sleep the entire band and transport the newly acquired equipment. Heady times for 19- and 20-year-old Yalies.

When Paul Colby, who ran The Bitter End in the Village, offered to manage and feature us at his prestigious club on Bleecker Street, we began to seriously consider being a full-time rock band—or at least take a year off from our studies to think about it.  The pop music scene in 1968 was offering us a different kind of learning curriculum.

Opening at Woolsey Hall for Eric Clapton’s Cream clinched the deal for most of us.  Opening at an outdoor NYC concert for Sly and the Family Stone—the first multiracial, multigender band that also pioneered a blend of rock, funk, and psychedelic soul—was in retrospect a bigger deal.  Pop music history was being made that year, and we wanted to be a part of it somehow.

Yet we had our sights set beyond New York, and when we were invited to play the Berkeley (California) Folk Festival in July of 1968—with Joan Baez, Howling Wolf, Jesse Fuller, John Fahey, and others—we happily accepted.

California Bound

In late June The Morning hit the road in our psychedelic school bus.  Given our hippie trappings and colorful vehicle, we were a bulls-eye for police all across the country.  The summer of 1968 did not quite have the peace/love vibe of the Summer of Love the year before.  But after many close calls with humorless authorities, we made it to Northern California, where we wound up staying for less than a week.

At the Berkeley Folk Festival we were quickly discovered by Doug Weston, the owner of the Troubadour in West Hollywood, the hottest folk club in the nation.  It was a coffee house with a bar!  Weston told us to hit the road to LA that night so we could perform on the Troubadour bill with Tom Rush and The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band the following evening.

We were in Hollywood by early morning and quickly made the club our home.  Tired of sleeping on the bus, I crashed on the Troubadour floor for the first week until Weston got us lodging in Hollywood.  A young Jackson Browne was also known to sleep at the club on occasion.

After performing at the Troubadour for several nights, we played the Hollywood Bowl with The Smothers Brothers, and the Whiskey a Go-Go with Taj Mahal.  We also were extras in the movie Paint Your Wagon—which ironically paid us a lot more than the musical gigs. We were quite the curiosity piece in Hollywood: a disheveled band of long-haired Yalies who played an unusual brand of folk-rock behind a melodious vocalist.

In the end it didn’t work out with Doug Weston either, but we were quickly claimed by another management team who set us up in concert with Frank Zappa, Alice Cooper, and The Grateful Dead (again).  Meanwhile, Gary Usher—who had co-written hit singles for The Beach Boys and produced hit singles for The Byrds—offered to sign a production contract with us.  For some reason—which again escapes me—we didn’t follow through on it.  I vaguely recall him pushing songs on us by some obscure New York songwriter named Carole King.  I wish I could remember why we didn’t take advantage of the many resources that were available to us at the time, but there are surprisingly large gaps in my memory of 1968.

Back to New Haven

Later that year we grew homesick for New Haven and returned to the East Coast in the late fall.  Randy Burns was tempted by a record deal with Apple Records, the Beatles’ new label, and I was itching to play drums in a harder rock band.  So, the band members went their separate ways in March of 1969.  For our farewell gig a new Boston group, The J. Geils Band, opened for us at the Stone Balloon, located under Pegnataro’s Supermarket on York Street. Their lead singer, Peter Wolf, tried to talk us out of breaking up but, as usual, we were impervious to outside advice.

At the beginning of 1970 the band regrouped for six more months in New Haven, played some events with William Sloane Coffin, got tear gassed at the May Day Rally, and then called it quits again.

Randy Burns went on to record for Mercury and Polydor with The Sky Dog Band, which included Mat Kastner, Bruce Samuels, and myself (briefly). But the group disbanded after a few years. Randy continues to record and perform to this day in New York and Connecticut. Mark Pines has become a music video producer, and has worked with The Rolling Stones and Jackson Browne.

The Morning has reunited for special occasions, as for the 25^th reunion of the Class of ‘69 in 1994 and the 25^th reunion of the Class of ‘70 in 1995.  As recently as 2014 we performed for the 40^th reunion of the Class of ‘74.  Because everyone is still growing musically, the band seems a little more focused and clear-eyed with each reunion.  As Bruce Samuels likes to say, “We don’t try to get high anymore; we get a good buzz by just standing up quickly.”

Videos

Here’s a Bob Dylan song we performed in the Commons Dining Hall in 1994 for the Class of ‘69 reunion.  You may be able to spot a few classmates in the audience shaking their booty .

Start video, then mouse over it and click on the expand icon to watch it in full screen

Below is a Randy Burns tune recorded in 1967, “Early Morning Fantasy,” which was in frequent rotation on WYBC in 1967-68 but never released as a record.  The photo is from our December 1967 appearance on a Hartford TV program, The Brad Davis Show, famous for its milk ads.  Because we were only lip-synching to a tape of this song, we decided it would be fun to go through the motions of playing each other’s instruments, which appalled our L.A. manager who thought we weren’t taking a TV gig seriously enough.  (We weren’t.)  But we chalked it up to a milk overdose.

Start video, then mouse over it and click on the expand icon to watch it in full screen

52 years after emerging from the Branford Buttery, we’re still kicking.  Getting the band back together is always a challenge, given everyone’s other music commitments, but anything is possible in the future!

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Other Reading and Video

The Morning played The Exit, Hungry Charlie’s, Yale gigs – New Haven Register, July 31, 2014