In terms of your early influences. When did you first start hearing the kind of music that influenced you?

Well, the first, gee, the first time I got turned on to rhythm and blues or, in, and in Orange County, you know, you know, was very, very tough. LA there was a, a few black radio stations that played all the R and B Hunter Hancock and, and a few of them. And you could barely get them in late at night, you could kind of get them in on the radio and the first, I think the first like rock and roll that knocked me out was a Little Richard song. The first time I heard Little Richard I just, I just couldn't believe that, I just couldn't believe what I was hearing. I mean the, the sound of his voice, the, the band, the music. I just, it just, it really turned me on. I mean it really turned my head around as far as music was. I mean because before then it was pretty much church choirs and school choirs and… and, and whatever. But, ah, he just, Little Richard made, made me crazy. So I'd buy his records and, and listen to his records. It was almost easier to buy the records than to hear, than to get, get the music, you know, on the radio.

Do you remember what song that was, that Little Richard song?

It probably was "Long Tall Sally" or :"Tutti Frutti" or one of those. And I still think Little Richard is the greatest rock and roll singer, has the greatest rock and roll voice ever.

What is it about his delivery that you liked so much?

I just like his, that edge, that, you know. [sings] Goin to tell Aunt Mary - you know that real cutty, just, you can, you can hear that he's not thinking, you know, and that was like the first, you know like anything rock and roll and, and soul music was like coming from the soul and from, you know, just, just out of their, out of their heart and out of their soul instead just contrived, not contrived but a way of singing the right correct way. This was like just flat from the street. And, ah that just knocked me out. Of course I was like a 14, 15 year-old kid from the street and I, you know that, you know, ah, that really made a lot of sense to me, you know, kind of a rebel thing.

When did you actually start singing?

Well I, I started singing, like I say, in church choirs which wasn't real amazing 'cause I was, I was raised as a Presbyterian and that was about as extremely white and extremely, you know, not a lot of, not a lot of emotion like I learned lately, you know when, not lately but years after that a, a friend of mine Darlene Love took me to her dad's church where he, he was a, a minister and, ah, and it was an all black, you know, choir. I mean it just, that's when I kind of got hipped to making joyful noise unto the Lord. And, ah, but so I started singing in school choirs and choir and I just loved to sing and I loved harmonies and all that. And then when rhythm and blues started squeaking in through the radio and this and that I, I would listen to it on the radio and I would sing along to it. And guys would, would comment, what's the matter, you, you know, you sound exactly like it 'cause I would sing exactly like Little Richard or I would sing exactly likes Fats Domino and or I would try to and, and in those days that, that was very unusual, you know, for a 16, 17 year-old kid to sing rhythm and blues or sound kind of, you know, black, and, ah, so I would just do that, sing to the radio. And then a, a friend of mine said, I understand that you're a singer. He said, I wrote a song and I'd like you to learn it so I can put it on tape for my girl friend or something. And I must have been 18 years-old then. And so I learned the song. And I watched how he wrote the song so that kind of, that kind of really turned me on to that. And there had always been a piano in our house and mom played the piano and, and sang. So when I was about 18 going on 19 I sat down, I started playing the piano, teaching myself how to play the piano and writing all these songs which was very strange because I was one of those yo-yos that dropped out of school when he was 16 and I was headed absolutely into oblivion. And, you know, never made June spoon, never made a rhyme or a poem or anything. And in about one year I probably wrote about, literally probably about 40 or 50 songs, some of them pretty good, some of them dreadful but, ah, I, I would start writing the songs and I'd put together a quartet and I was like the lead singer and I would do all the, do all the vocal backgrounds and all that because when, when I would listen to rock and roll records, I really listened to all of it: I listened to the, the vocal background, the rhythm section, everything that they were doing so when it came time to put together one of my own songs, it was pretty, it was pretty easy. And, ah, so I just, so actually 19 years-old I would have to say is when I really started getting into it. I, I was like, you know, a singer in the car to the radio until then. But then that's when I really got serious with it.

How did you and Bobby…

Well Bobby and I first met when I was, I think we were about 20, we're the same age. And Bobby was raised in Anaheim here in Orange County

…

Oh, "Little Latin Lupe Lu" was a song that I wrote, I must have been, oh, 20, 21 when I wrote it. And actually I wrote it more like, like a, a band thing. Like Bobby and I were kind of singing what we considered horn lines like [sings] Talkin’ about my babe, little Latin Lupe Lu, you know, pa pa pa Lupe Lu was pretty much was to us felt like a band thing. And, ah, I wrote the song probably when I was 20 and Bobby and I were working in a small club in, in Orange County here and we had just started and I, I taught the song to Bobby and we were singing it in the club and a lot of, a lot of the people liked, liked the song. And there was a record label locally here called Moonglow that I, that my quartet had done some background work for. And he came into the club to see us. And I said, listen to this song, you know and listen to Bobby and I do this, you know. And he liked the song. He liked, you know, how we did it. He said, well, why don't we record it? And we were called the Paramours then. So we went in, we re., we recorded the song. We hated the name Paramours and, and the black marines that were coming into the club, like if this was a nice coat they would say, that's a righteous coat. If they liked you as a friend they called you a brother. So they were calling us the righteous brothers which really meant good friends so we said, well, let's use the name that the guys have been calling us. So we call ourselves the Righteous Brothers. We record the song, nothing happened with it, we, we got fired from our job, went down to a local place, big ballroom, dance ballroom, the Rendezvous Ballroom and started singing it there and the kids loved it and they went out and bought and the Righteous Brothers took off. But we were only together about six months before, before our first hit record. A lot of dues were paid there, right?

You were talking about your early recordings, there are so many things going on all unified by this live, vital sound. Is that what you were going after?

Well we weren't nec… we were so young, you know when we started recording. We weren't really going after a sound or anything else. We were really having a picnic in, you know, in the studio because, you know, we were like kids in a candy store. We would pick out the songs that we wanted to record and in those days, you kind of did songs that had already been recorded and this and that. We didn't do a lot of originals even though we wrote, you know, some of the stuff like "Lupe Lu" and "My Babe" and, and some of those. But we would rehearse them down here with young rock and roll musicians, we were all like 22 because those were the only guys that we could find that really understood rock and roll. You know we didn't want to take jazz players that could kind of play rock and roll. And so we would just go in the studio and it was live. It was probably two track, three track, four track and, ah, we would sing live. So it was very much garage kind of, ah, music. If nothing else it was very honest and there, there was a lot of energy. I can't say that it was the cleanest and most precised kind of thing that we ever did.

We read when you went out to promote "Little Latin Lupe Lu" that you would go to the black radio stations and they thought you were some kind of gimmick.

Yeah, Atlantic Records was, was distributing for, ah, they were distributing "Little Latin Lupe Lu" for Moonglow Records and Reg Schwartz took us out on the road to promote the record 'cause they were getting, starting to get it played a lot. But most of the airplay was coming from black radio stations so Red would take us to the, the black radio stations to be interviewed and they were amazed that we were white. And, ah, they would do the interview with us and then after we would leave they would have to take the record off. Not that they wanted to, you know, it wasn't a prejudice it was that they, they were an all black radio station. And then it became a, a thing that a lot of the people in the business thought that there was two black guys in LA that were recording the music and then they were sending the two white guys out like kind of as a, as a gimmick thing. And, ah, so I, actually sending us out on the road to promote it probably did it, did the record more harm than good.

Took it off the air?

Yeah, yeah they had to, they.

Some gimmick.

Yeah, some gimmick.

How did you end up opening for the Beatles?

We don't know to this day how we ended up on the Beatle tour. We had heard that the boys requested it. We, the first time, the first time they ever came to America they did a show in Washington, I believe it was and, and for one reason or another we were asked to do that show. So we did that show and then when they came over for their first tour we were asked to do that tour. We were, we don't know. We don't know if the Beatles were aware of us. We haven't had the opportunity to run into the guys to say, by the way, why were we on that tour? But we, we have found out in the last few years that those first couple of Moonglow albums did real well in England. That a lot of the young bands and guys over there were like listening to that, you know. They were really turned on to those first two albums. So maybe we, maybe we were something over there and we didn't know it and the Beatles were aware of us and said, go on that tour. But I don't know.

Any memories of that Washington concert?

Well not really other than on the tour it was, it was just, you know publicize, the Beatle tour. And then there, there was about four or five other acts, Righteous Brothers, the Exciters, the Bill Black Combo and some, some people and Jackie D. Shannon and these kids and, you know, you got to think back, these were like 13, 14, 15 year-old kids, didn't know that they were going to have to live through like about an hour of people that they could have cared less about. So there was a lot of, [clapping hands] we want the Beatles, we want. And I mean it was, it was pretty weird. And, and they would throw, you know, jelly beans apparently at the Beatles and I guess they were throwing jelly beans at us once in a while but it scared us to death. So we got about halfway through that tour and went to Brian Epstein and say, listen man, this has really been, you know, a great experience and everything but, ah, you know, we, we would rather, we'd rather go home, you know. Because it was just really odd, it was just real, real weird. And it was kind of good that we went home because we went home to do a pilot for a show called Shindig which became real big and kind of got us nationally known.

What did you think of the Beatles music at the time?

We thought it was very, very bubble gum. Bobby and I were… [INTERRUPTION]. Yeah, the Beatles music we, we thought was very bubble gum. This was like their first stuff. And, and like I say, their audiences were real young. We were at least accustomed to performing to people our age, that kind of understood rhythm and blues a little bit and this and that. And, ah, the Beatle tour was just altogether different. So we considered their music bubble gum, good. And we considered them real good, obviously. But it, but it was bubble gum music and, to us. And they obviously, ah, came forward very, very fast and, you know, it certainly wasn't bubble gum music at that point, you know, great, great, some of the greatest music ever, ever written I think.

How did you get involved with Shindig. Any stories about the first show?

Well Shindig was, was, again was like being in a candy store. It was a wonderful, Jack Good came down to see another act, Jack Good was the producer, he came down to see another act in a club in Hollywood and Bobby and I were performing there that night. And he fell in love with us and asked us if we would do the pilot. And the pilot I think was with Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis and, and it was pretty wild. And I don't think they would let that show air. They bought the show but they said, we don't want this show to go on because it was pretty authentic, you know, and television, you know in those age for sure, you know, they, they wanted it watered down, you know.

What was so wild about it?

Well it was just wild to the point that, that Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis were like on pianos pointing at each other and they were playing and going crazy and then standing on the pianos and you know sweating and really singing and rock and roll, you know. That was too weird for TV I guess.