The decades pass quickly. One loses touch with old friends. Spouses, children, work, and other concerns demand attention. But now and then an opportunity presents itself to renew old acquaintances. So when news broke that Darryl Rhoades was planning a Hahavishnu Orchestra “Celebration” concert some fifteen years ago, a light went on. Get in touch with Darryl. We could talk and I’d work up a story, like in The Great Speckled Bird days. So we talked. There was a lot of ground to cover, but first things first. We talked baseball.
Our baseball chatter focused mostly on the Atlanta Braves, then experiencing a so-so season. However, so-so was a great improvement over the Braves as we knew them in the mid to late ’70s when infielders Darrel Chaney, Rod Gilbreath and Pepe Frias cleared paths for ground balls to go through. It was in those days, and at least for another twenty years, every Braves game was on TBS, with repeat broadcasts in the wee hours of the morning. That was great for a baseball-loving musician likely not to finish work until after midnight. Darryl recalled the routine, “I’d walk through the bar where they had the game on live and I’d look away from the set and cover my ears so I would not hear the score. If someone told me who won the game, it ruined the rest of my day.”
Remembering the days of Ernie, Pete, and Skip behind the mic evoked other memories of Atlanta in the ’70s, long before the era of the Cumberland Mall Braves. There was a sense of adventurism in the city’s music community. Acts were getting bolder yet the attitudes were not unpleasant. Affability was a good thing. Because everything seems to be in your face these days, the daring but accessible comedy through mostly rock and roll stylings by Darryl Rhoades and The Hahavishnu Orchestra is remembered as comforting and rather harmless. And also good for a multitude of laughs. After all, Rhoades didn’t create his satire to make people angry; he just wanted them to think, at least when they weren’t too busy laughing.
Rhoades gives people a lot to think about in his long-awaited memoir, The Road To Almost, a fantastic overview on life as a musician, writer, comedian, and well-informed observer of the times in Atlanta and beyond. While the book is essentially about Rhoades building a career that many of us thought would lead to a big deal with a big record label and national recognition of the musician-as-satirist, or vice versa, it’s a splendid account of an artist looking back at his life with humor and appreciation.
True, “Almost” was a destination further up the road than he, his fans, and local music insiders thought in the mid ‘70s, but in his memoir, subtitled The Lean Years . . . 1950 -2024, it’s obvious Rhoades has enjoyed the trip, reveling over the good times and grateful to have survived threats of violence and the usual indignities that are part and parcel of the arts and entertainment business, which some believe exists to enlighten and amuse us. If you’re long past that notion, then you’ll enjoy The Road To Almost even more, delighted that mirth can be found in the madness.
Essentially, Darryl’s road trip begins in the mid ‘60s during his teen years in Forest Park, Georgia, a suburb south of Atlanta stuck in the middle of the middle class, years before Atlanta’s international airport gobbled up the area’s vast quantities of land. Planes, taking off and landing, barely seemed to clear the roofs of Forest Park’s mostly one-story homes. As the years went by, it became more difficult conversing with a neighbor outside one’s home. Back then, some of us saw it coming. Atlanta wanted to own the world’s busiest airport and that would not be good for the neighboring communities’ quality of life. That wasn’t much of an issue in the ‘60s, however. The people of Forest Park were proud of their schools, their Baptist churches, new shopping centers, and the town’s very low crime rate. Everything was fine. Still, it could be a tough place to grow up. Too often, the mean guys ruled. They had quite a following, making it difficult for guys like Rhoades, who espoused different views on society, hair-length, education, high school football, and things artistic. The best thing such a guy could do was to hit the road and head north to Atlanta and its wide-open hippie community. There Rhoades, instead of taking his anger out on classmates, could bang away on the drums with The Celestial Voluptuous Banana, often described as “the most psychedelic band in Atlanta.”
In his book, Rhoades recalls Atlanta’s hippie scene vividly. There along the Strip (on Peachtree between 8th and 14th in the city’s Midtown neighborhood), were clubs like the Catacombs and the Twelfth Gate, where bands just getting started, like Little Feat and Wet Willie, would play. Friend or foe, Rhoades appears to have known everyone who worked at or got thrown out of any of the Strip’s hangouts.
On Sunday afternoons, the Celestial Voluptuous Banana would play in nearby Piedmont Park, as would some of the nationally-known acts passing through town. Some lucky folks could be walking down Tenth Street near Monroe Drive and realize groups like Santana, Chicago, Mountain, or Boz Scaggs’ band were playing for free just a short distance away. What a time. Everything seemed possible — that is, if the high school principal didn’t make you get a haircut, or the very next year find yourself in Vietnam, propping up your country’s distorted global ambitions.
Darryl got to keep his long hair, although Forest Park Senior High principals Kirkland and Amick aimed to tie him to a barber chair. Darryl also got to keep his life and limbs as the 2S draft deferment worked in his favor. From here on, all he had to worry about was how he’d make a living from playing drums. That way he could eat, find decent shelter, and pay taxes to feed his country’s war machine. Perhaps the upcoming half-century would be a breeze.
By the mid ‘70s, the Celestial Voluptuous Banana was way back in Darryl’s rearview. Rock music was giving way to disco on the pop charts. The Strip as we knew it in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s was no more. Peace, love, and music were replaced by bathhouses, bikers, and the hardcore life. But Rhoades still had the beat and was providing it for various bands in the Deep South. Easy and dependable paychecks came weekly when playing hotel lounges. Yes, there were compromises, as with having to wear a wig to obscure his long hair and playing “Love Will Keep Us Together” way too many times. The paychecks were necessary, but Rhoades was getting bored. Always the creative sort, he worked on writing his own songs, thinking that somewhere, if not the Holiday Inn, he could play them, get even better paychecks and move far beyond Almost.
In ‘75, one could flip on the radio in Atlanta and hear several songs written and performed by Darryl Rhoades, but not on the hot Top 40 stations, Z-93 or WQXI. They wouldn’t be heard on the album-rock stations such as the FM-QXI or 96 Rock either. However, during the summer, listeners of WIIN 97, a daytime-only station that was slated for a change of format or to just go off the air, began to hear Darryl’s songs in a set with The Rolling Stones, The Mothers of Invention, and Stephen Stills. The afternoon hosts, Ross Brittain and Rex Patton, happily unencumbered by anything like a format, not only presented Darryl’s worldview through his recordings, but would also feature him in live interviews. The station that supposedly no one listened to was helping Darryl Rhoades build a career.
Listeners naturally comfortable with a left-of-center perspective were quite amused with this Rhoades guy. There seemed no end to the topics he would feature in his songs. Interested in a spoof on the Jaws phenomena about a surfin’ shark set to the tune of Jan and Dean’s “Dead Man’s Curve”? Rhoades came up with one. A song about leprosy? He had one of those. A song about a guy’s crush on a winsome car hop? He had that covered too. A song about abortion that could enrage both the pro-life and pro-choice sides? Well, of course. In The Road To Almost, Darryl writes that “My attitude was pretty much if I’m hittin’ a nerve, I’m hittin’ the mark: great soundbite but stupid logic.”
No matter the logic, the approach worked. Curiosity grew over Darryl Rhoades and his peculiar twist on the pop music forms we had long taken to heart. Could he get away with doing this in a concert setting? Yes, he could, and even better.
By late summer ‘75, Rhoades assembled a six-man band with three back-up singers (two women and the incredibly talented Jimmy Royals in drag), and two dancers that gave his songs a heaping helping of razzle dazzle. The performances were tight. From the beginning it was obvious the artists Rhoades gathered around him had a great sense of musical and comedic history. And as the Hahavishnu Orchestra, they were making history themselves. From their first few gigs in Atlanta, and especially once they began appearing at the homey and beloved Great Southeast Music Hall, Darryl Rhoades and the Hahavishnu Orchestra were the hottest act in town. It didn’t seem that Rhoades would have to spend much more time in Almost.
The environs of Almost were quite welcoming. Record industry people, some of them actual decision-makers, loved Darryl Rhoades and the Hahavishnu Orchestra. The Music Hall was packed for most of their shows. The act got great press. Rhoades made contact with significant people in the business, including legendary producers Jerry Wexler and Joel Dorn. The great songwriter Doc Pomus (“Save the Last Dance for Me,” “Viva Las Vegas,” “Lonely Avenue,” …) befriended Rhoades and took him on a tour of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, offering loads of advice as well as use of his couch for overnights. A smart guy like Pomus, who beat a long series of odds in his career and actually gave Bob Dylan advice on songwriting (at Dylan’s request) was the sort who understood Rhoades’ ambitions and what made him tick. The wide array of wisdom Pomus shared has resonated with Rhoades for nearly a half-century. If Pomus had taken Rhoades to Ahmet Ertegun and demanded he sign Rhoades to Atlantic Records, it would not have been equal to what Rhoades gained from the simple acts of friendship offered by Pomus.
Still, Rhoades, his band mates, and friends worked the angles, hitting the industry gatherings, promoting Darryl Rhoades and the Hahavishnu Orchestra, urging record label execs to see the band in concert, and strongly urging them to sign the act to a major deal. America would love them just as Atlanta did. At the 1976 Radio and Records convention held at Atlanta’s Peachtree Plaza Hotel, three of us went to the Arista Records suite, surrounded Clive Davis and cited chapter and verse on the dynamic artistry of Darryl Rhoades. Davis listened and responded cordially, but there’d be no big deal with Arista Records. Several months later, there was a trip to the annual Capricorn Records Picnic, held at Lakeside Park, just outside Macon. Ahmet Ertrgun was there, hanging out with Andy Warhol and a lovely young lady, but the star attraction that day was Jimmy Carter, the Democratic Party nominee for President, on the verge of signing his own big deal with the people of the United States. Being in the midst of the Secret Service, the national press, legends from the artistic world, and the next President of the United States made it tough for Rhoades to attract much attention. Another day, although of a different sort, in Almost.
Rhoades got to Almost rather quickly. Within a year of his songs first being heard at WIIN-97, he and the Hahavishnu Orchestra repeatedly drew large crowds at the Bistro, the Great Southeast Music Hall, and Alex Cooley’s Electric Ballroom. Then they hit the road, not only playing the clubs in smaller southern towns, but also The Other End in New York City and Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, Texas. There were great write-ups on Rhoades in Rolling Stone and The Village Voice. Almost was a pretty good place while pursuing the really big deal. However, the people in the conference rooms who could guide aspiring artists north of Almost too often had no clue. They thought Darryl Rhoades and the Hahavishnu Orchestra were great at the clubs, but had no idea how Rhoades’ music and schtick would work on vinyl. So they chose not to bother. There were cocaine lunches to host, after all. Doing something really creative in a creative business could be a real bother.
Keeping a large outfit like the Hahavishnu Orchestra together and mostly happy took some creativity as well. Rhoades and the group were getting a decent amount of work, but the gigs were hardly top-dollar. Some group members were compelled to return to their day jobs, which made touring inconvenient. Predictably, there was turnover within the band, with the more popular members leaving. By the spring of ‘78, roughly three years after its founding, the Hahavishnu Orchestra was disbanded. Just continuing to reside in Almost would prove to be a challenge for Rhoades.
But Rhoades stayed at it. In essence, he was his own best agent, manager, PR hack, and fan club president. Watching Darryl during those early years in the city of Almost, it seemed that every time he left his home, there would be an opportunity to boost his career. The guy in front of him in line at the Majik Market might be someone that would catapult Rhoades’ career. Taking in Darryl’s line of talk was a good use of time. There was always a great side-story. It was usually quite funny and it was impossible to walk away from Darryl and not really like the guy. In the record industry during those years, there were numerous promo guys who’d rely on the lie. Shameless liars, but they were more tolerable than the stupid liars. Darryl, on the other hand, a performer who lampooned the accepted and beloved, was quite honest in his approach and always most congenial, even with a cutting line.
Since breaking up the Hahavishnu Orchestra in ‘78, Rhoades has continued to reside in Almost, using his wits and talents on new musical projects that called for exploring and expanding on the conventional genres with far less theatrics. On his 2009 album, Weapons of Mass Deception, there’s a track entitled “The Edge of the World” which addresses the doubts and bewilderment of those obedient to God, while dealing with a world of grief. It’s a very straight-ahead rocker possessing a great pop melody in which all at once Rhoades’ vocals recall both Ricky Nelson and Elvis Costello. Even better from that album is “The Sins of the Father,” a vibrant Appalachian-styled number that revisits the last two wars the US has fought with Iraq and how both Presidents Bush, father and son, made life so hard for the fathers and sons serving their country.
Rhoades has also succeeded with a stand-up comedy career in recent decades. As this piece is being written, he has a weekend gig in Tampa. In 2009, he had a small role in the Jeff Bridges film, Crazy Heart, portraying — what else? — a drummer in a dive bar.
The Road To Almost is a unique rock and roll memoir. You might think of it as the antithesis of Hammer of the Gods. Here, Darryl Rhoades tells us the very intriguing story of his life, which has not yet included the big deal, but 74 years of colorful experiences and observations. As with George Bailey, he’s had a wonderful life. Besides who else do we know who’s appeared as a guest on James Brown’s TV show (Future Shock) and then, filling in on a local TV show, interviewed Lester Maddox? If you’re well-grounded, Almost can be a nice place.
I am currently reading Darryl Rhoades’ book and feel compelled to Google search almost every name I encounter in the text to learn more about the characters Darryl encountered during his career. The book is a great read, especially since I experienced some of the things Rhoades did back in the 60s & 70s of the last century in the rock music world of Atlanta. I am in awe of the man’s perseverance in striving to achieve success and acceptance in the world of entertainment.