#Vanilla fudge drummer professional

While sharing a bill at The Eye on Long Island, the band was blown away by guitarist Leslie WestвЂ™s band, The Vagrants, which specialized in expanding the songs of other artists into gargantuan productions. By early вЂ66, The Pigeons had built an audience base up and down the East Coast without benefit of recording, although eight songs they laid on tape mid-year eventually saw light of day on a Wand LP, While the Whole World Was Eating Vanilla Fudge, credited to Mark Stein & The Pigeons. The PigeonsвЂ™ set list mostly consisted of R&B covers, and they sometimes backed stars such as The Shangri-Las and Patti LaBelle & The Blue Belles. Further reinforcing the family ties, MarkвЂ™s father was their booking agent. That cemented the first lineup of The Pigeons, who tightened their attack by rehearsing on the Bogert familyвЂ™s front porch in New Jersey. Lead guitarist Vince Martell, a Navy vet born Novemin the Bronx and recently returned from a stint in Key West with a band known as Ricky T & The Satans Three, was recruited through a local agent.

Finding inspiration in the dynamic organ-based soul-rock of The Young Rascals (their Felix Cavaliere was SteinвЂ™s musical hero), the hottest band on the New York circuit, Stein and Bogert gave the Showmen their notice and put together their own band, drummer Joey Brennan also switching allegiances. When the bandвЂ™s bassist was drafted, Tim Bogert, born Augin New York City, came into the equation. Stein started playing piano when he was a wee lad of four, tried his hand at squeezing the accordion for a brief minute, and made a doo-wop 45 as Mark Stevens & The Charmers before settling in behind the organ and joining a local outfit, Rick Martin & The Showmen, that gigged regularly on the bustling New York club scene.

#Vanilla fudge drummer professional

Lead vocalist and keyboardist Mark Stein, born Main Bayonne, New Jersey, had plenty of professional musical experience despite barely being out of his teens when the band burst onto the national scene in 1967. Very few of them recast a song entirely in their own image the way Vanilla Fudge did with the SupremesвЂ™ вЂњYou Keep Me HanginвЂ™ On.вЂќ The powerhouse rock quartetвЂ™s inspired remake of the Holland-Dozier-Holland-penned anthem slowed the tempo down radically, with one creative foot planted in the eraвЂ™s psychedelic movement and the other pointing to the advent of heavy metal hovering just around the corner. A lot of rock bands covered soul hits during the 1960s.