Blue Cheer Founder Dickie Peterson Dies at 61
http://www.spinner.com/2009/10/13/blue-cheer-founder-dickie-peterson-dead-at-61/
10/13/09
Dickie Peterson, bassist and frontman for legendary heavy metal
pioneers Blue Cheer, died Monday, Oct. 12, at the age of 61.
Peterson, who founded the proto-metal outfit in 1967 in the Bay Area,
passed away in Germany after battling liver cancer, according to Blabbermouth.
Influenced by the era's heavy blues innovators Cream and Jimi
Hendrix, Blue Cheer made its first impact in early 1968 when it
released its debut album 'Vincebus Eruptum.' A roaring opposite to
Haight Ashbury's flower power, Peterson stood in stark contrast to
San Francisco based bands like the Grateful Dead.
Named for a potent strain of acid, Blue Cheer's proto metal actually
produced a chart hit when its rendition of Eddie Cochran's
'Summertime Blues' made it all the way to No. 11 on the Billboard
charts. Jim Morrison once called the power trio "The single most
powerful band I've ever seen." Live, they were the first band ever
listed in the 'Guinness Book of World Records' as "Loudest Band in
the World," establishing a precedent which was eventually eclipsed by
Ritchie Blackmore and Deep Purple.
Despite the fact that Blue Cheer, which also initially included
drummer Paul Whaley and guitarist Lee Stephens, was the first
American band to use Marshall amplifiers, their impact was endured
even if the band didn't last. The band called it a day in 1972,
however Peterson resuscitated the group 1984 for a 10-year run and
reignited it in 1999 for regular touring. In 2007, Blue Cheer
recorded its first new studio release in 15 years, 2007's 'What
Doesn't Kill You ...,' and continued to tour the globe.
--------
BLUE CHEER'S DICKIE PETERSON DEAD AT 61
October 13, 2009
Serene Dominic
Dickie Peterson, bassist, lead vocalist and founding member of the
legendary Blue Cheer, "loudest band in the world, passed away on
Monday, October 12 at 5 a.m. in Germany at age 61, after a struggle
with prostate and liver cancer. He reportedly developed a fatal
infection following a surgical procedure to help alleviate his fight.
Although the San Francisco power trio had only one chart entry in
the top 100, their version of Eddie Cochran's "Summertime
Blues" which let the lead guitar and bass speak for the Cochran's
dad, boss and congressman, the band influenced a generation of stoner
rockers, grunge outfits, heavy metalists and hardcore grinders.
Petersen, a modest man, would probably maintain he was just playing
rock and roll and leave it at that.
Peterson was a true gentleman and an original. I had the pleasure of
interviewing him in person at the Rhythm Room in Phoenix, Arizona on
January 31, 2008 and learned a lot of interesting factoids about this
quiet man fronting "the loudest band in the world."
You can stream the entire interview at killingtimeproductions.com or
serenedominic.com but here are just some of what you'll hear in
Dickie's own words.
1. Blue Cheer held the Guiness Record for "the loudest band in the
world" but were overtaken by the Who in 1976.
To add insult to injury, the Who covered "Summertime Blues" in 1970,
leading many Classic Rock fans to lose top shelf drink arguments on
who had the hit first.Blue Cheer's version predated the Who's "Live
at Leeds" version although people argue that the Who had been
performing it several years prior, most notably at the Monterey Pop
Festival. The last band recorgnized by the Guiness record keepers
was Manowar who clocked in at a schreeching 139dB in 2008.
2. Dickie Peterson developed callouses inside his ears.
"A lot of bass players will develop callous over the eardrum whereas
as a guitarist, because it's such a high frequency will rip the
eardrum." This may explain why Petereson was able to play at maximum
volume until his dying day and original guitarist Leigh Stephens
plays at a more sonically sensible setting.
3. " Vincebus Eruptum" is the first album cover with raised
lettering, beating the Beatles' White Album by several months.
Blind fans were grateful to finally have an album cover they could
see but Dickie revealed, "It was actually done when you were stoned
on acid, it felt really good."
4. Proctor and Gamble tried unsucessfully to stop the band from
using the name Blue Cheer
Said Dickie "It came out in court that they didn't have the name Blue
Cheer copyrighted, They had New Cheer with Blue Magic Whiteners. the
court said unless we were selling soap, they couldn;t do anything
about it." As an extra bit of humiliation the band called its third
album New! Improved! Blue Cheer.
5. Blue Cheer went full circle when it rerecorded "Just a Little Bit"
from the group's second album on its last album What Doesn't Kill You….
They did that so fans could see the how true to ther original sound
the band stayed. Or as Peterson put it, "acknowledge the lack of difference."
Rest in peace, Dickie.
--
Write to Serene @ serenedominic@gmail.com
a
--------
Blue Cheer: Harder 'n' Louder Than The Rest
http://www.jambase.com/Articles/Story.aspx?storyID=10440
By: Chris Pacifico
10/15/09
With the passing of Dickie Peterson earlier this week on October 12
after a long battle with liver cancer, we wanted to share this
conversation with Peterson that took place in late 2006 as the band
was firmly establishing a young, new audience. This interview has
never been seen until now.
--
There are certain bands in the history of rock & roll that never got
their proper due, yet remained pivotal in serving as the blueprint
for a genre. Case in point, Blue Cheer. In the mid to early '60s,
this trio was just another pack of "crazy longhairs" that happened to
form a band and go to San Francisco. Perhaps they weren't wearing any
flowers in their hair but Blue Cheer's presence on the Haight-Ashbury
scene was one louder than most of their musical peers.
Blue Cheer was amongst the first to turn their amps up to eleven.
Bassist-vocalist Dickie Peterson, guitarist Leigh Stephens and
drummer Paul Whaley blared out cumbersome guitar riffs with blizzards
of raw, psychedelic voltage, bluesy hooks and quaking beats.
Peterson, whose un-decibel friendly vocals and beefy bass was no less
than lacerating, always saw himself as more of a "blues screamer"
than a lead singer. They never quite morphed into a household name in
part because they were a tad loud for some of the peace loving, tune
in and drop out generation. Yet Blue Cheer managed to share the stage
and local limelight with the who's who of musicians in the Age of Aquarius.
In 1968 their debut album, Vincebus Eruptum, peaked at #11 on the
Billboard, and their version of Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues"
went to #14 on the singles chart.
Their sophomore LP, Outsideinside, was just as creatively fervid, but
as the '60s wound down Blue Cheer slipped through the cracks of much
deserved recognition while still cutting albums, touring and enduring
a revolving door of lineup changes well into the '80s and '90s. Yet,
it was with their first two albums that Blue Cheer became unsung
heroes, with many crediting the power trio for laying down the first
brick in the towering house that became heavy metal.
Many a heavy band swears by them, which in past decades has
solidified them as cult heroes. "I first heard Blue Cheer in 1981
while under the spell of hardcore," recalls Mudhoney's Mark Arm. "I
met this kid from the Bay Area while attending college in Oregon. He
was one of about five folks at the school who was even slightly into
punk rock. We were all hanging out in his dorm room and he puts
Vincebus Eruptum on the turntable and says, 'Check out what these
crazy hippies did back in the '60s.' It nearly split my head in two.
Hearing Blue Cheer at that point was almost as important to me as
hearing The Stooges for the first time the year before. When Mudhoney
started up, Blue Cheer was definitely part of our blueprint."
"I have a more interesting relationship with Blue Cheer's songs than
I do most people I know," explains "psychedevangelist"/ring
leader/lead singer Eddie Gieda of An Albatross. "Their music,
throughout their entire catalog, is a sonic epicenter of the prolific
cultural revolution of the '60s and '70s West Coast. Their degree of
separation between virtually all of the '60s political, musical,
philosophical, and cultural figures that I deem essential in forming
our country's history is unbelievably minute. These guys are the real
fucking deal and to meet them is to know that their spirit, unlike
their peers, hasn't eroded. They're still loud and still proud."
Prior to Peterson's passing, Blue Cheer continued to tour with
two-thirds of their original lineup, with guitarist Andrew "Duck"
MacDonald taking Stephens' place, and crossing into the shattered
eardrums of a new generation of fans who like it loud and lewd.
Dickie Peterson spoke with JamBase about the band's place in history,
the upheaval of their youth, and how the Grateful Dead managed to
piss them off.
JamBase: In the early days of Blue Cheer you guys started out as a
regular young California band just aiming to head out to the Bay Area, right?
Dickie Peterson: Yeah, everybody was just moving to San Francisco
because it was such a happening music scene that was wide open. It
was a really rare event in the music world since all the rules were
being tossed out the window and everything was accepted.
JamBase: How did you get the attention of PolyGram Records?
Dickie Peterson: Actually, Abe "Voco" Kesh, who was our producer had
a bit to do with it. He had talked to several record companies and
nobody wanted anything to do with us because we were so different
than anything else that was going on. We went in and we did a demo,
and we took it to KPIX radio and they got so many requests for it
that the record companies couldn't ignore us.
Any sort of music style or artists that really roused you or the
members of Blue Cheer to pick up the instruments and start playing?
Blues. Jimmy Reed, Howlin' Wolf, Lightnin' Hopkins, John Lee Hooker.
These were all big influences for me, and also Little Richard. Oh,
and Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry. I had the unique honor of meeting
both of them.
You took your name from a strand of Owsley Stanley's acid, right?
Yes, that and also because of the strain of music that we gravitated
toward was jump blues.
I'm sure you're aware that over the years there have been many
journalists, as well as fans, that credit Blue Cheer for paving the
road for what is now heavy metal.
You know I can see where people are coming from but I can't really
say if we were the first heavy metal band or the first of anything
because there were a lot of bands kind of in our realm around us,
such as the MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges. I think we were the first
American power trio. I guess if you listen to us you'll find elements
of heavy metal, elements of grunge, elements of punk, elements of the
blues, and even elements of country. You'll find all of these in our music.
Coming from the musical era of the '60s in San Francisco, Blue
Cheer's music was obviously heavier and a whole lot louder than that
of your civic counterparts of the time, such as Jefferson Airplane,
Country Joe and the Fish, and the Grateful Dead. At the time, were
you guys intent on becoming heavier and louder than those bands or
was that what just came out naturally?
Well, we were aiming to become louder and more powerful than anybody
else in the world. It wasn't just limited to San Francisco.
Blue Cheer shared the stage with the likes of the Grateful Dead,
Hendrix, and Santana. Any stories from those times that you'd like to share?
Well, I know that we always had a problem with the Grateful Dead
because once they walked on the stage nobody else went on. They would
go on for hours and I thought that this was really unprofessional,
chicken shit bullshit because all of these bands, all of us needed
our stage time and they would hog it. So, we started chasing their
ladies around.
What was it like the first time that you saw Hendrix play?
This was a religious experience for me. I swear to God, that night at
The Fillmore the man's feet left the ground, and I think all of these
guitar players today owe him no matter how many practical skills
they've learned. Everything they do, Hendrix did first. There has not
been another Hendrix type guitarist that's come on the scene. Perhaps
he's being born now. I don't know.
Any bands out there today that have caught your ear?
There are several bands but I don't really follow too much
contemporary music. You get in my car and you get a lot of rhythm & blues.
The turbulence of that era obviously played a big part in the
creative process of a lot of bands in the '60s. Would you say that
was accurate as far as Blue Cheer was concerned?
Oh yes, it certainly did. I don't know that it was so much a
political thing with us as much as it was a social thing.
So, the overall loudness is what evoked a semblance of the upheaval?
Yeah, I think the whole social, Vietnam, and anti-establishment
protests were all things that I think helped our band.
What was it like being in a band during an American cultural revolution?
It was a time I'm sure none of us will ever forget because we were
living in Haight-Ashbury, which was wide open. The Hell's Angels were
basically the police department, LSD was legal [prior to October
1966], and the stuff that I miss very deeply was that everybody was
everybody else's keeper. Everybody took care of each other. If you
didn't have a place to sleep, somebody would take you home so you
could sleep and they'd feed you.
A really deep community vibe, huh?
It was an alternative culture that was really working.
It must be a bummer to see Haight-Ashbury now since all that
gentrification went down and with the McDonalds and the Gap up in there.
Sort of, but there were so many people that were around at that time
that I'm disappointed in personally. I think they're traitors to the
revolution. I think they dropped the ball. They went back to selling
insurance and real estate at daddy's office, which is what we were
all against. We didn't want that but in the end I would say that the
one thing that brought that era down was hard drugs.
I always saw it as kind of a cliché when people point the finger at
Altamont as the single catalyst of what made it all come falling
down. It was no doubt a major turning point but there is just so much
more that led up to it.
I think of it in a different way. I think critics and historians want
to look back at that and cite that as a reason, and it's kind of
insane. If you look at concerts these days, you'll be lucky to walk
out of them alive at some of these places. At some of these big
concerts people are being crushed; there is so much going on. With
Altamont, a guy got killed there and it was the first time, and now
this happens all the time.
How does it feel to be playing to a new generation of fans?
We're so humbled by the fact that all these young people come out to
our shows. Every night I can look down in front of my microphone and
there's somebody much younger than me who knows all the words to the
songs. We're very humbled by this, and it means more than I can
actually put into words. I'm trying to figure out how to write a song
about it. We not only crossed over to younger people but we bridged
generation gaps. At any of our shows there are fathers and sons and
daughters that come, and some people that say, "Hey man, I've been
listening to your music since I was six hours old." It's humbling.
It's not anything that we tried to do, it just happened.
.
0 comments:
Post a Comment