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From Mirrors to Rockets and Beyond
An interview with Craig Bell of
Mirrors and Rocket From the Tombs
By Bob
Ignizio |
*** NOTE: This article originally appeared in the Lakewood Observer in
a slightly different form ***
In the early seventies, before terms like “punk rock”
and “alternative” were even used, Cleveland was home to a small but
influential scene of groundbreaking rock bands. Craig Bell was an important
part of two of these bands: Mirrors and Rocket From the Tombs. Born in
Almyra, New York on February 22, 1952, Craig moved to Lakewood in 1961.
And it was as a kid in Lakewood that Craig first realized he wanted to be a
rock & roll musician. Craig says, “I went to see Ferry Cross the
Mersey over at the Beachcliff Theater with my friend Dave Davis. I
think we sat through it like 5 times. That to me was when I said to myself
I’d really like to be in a rock n roll band. To me was the catalyst.”
Eventually Craig hooked up with fellow Lakewood High
School alumni Michael Weldon (drums) and Jamie Klimek (guitar and vocals)
and non-Lakewoodite Jim Crook (keyboards, guitar) in 1971 to form Mirrors.
The band needed a bass player, and despite not knowing how to play Craig
accepted the job. Craig says, “Jamie told me, ‘here’s the E string, the A
string, the D and the G. You figure out the rest for yourself.’ I actually
took little pieces of tape and stuck ‘em on the fret board under each string
and wrote down what that note was. That’s how I learned where the notes
were, and how to play. That and just playing along with Jamie and Mike.”
Although other accounts say Mirrors didn’t start until 1973, Craig is
certain it was 1971. “I went into the army in 1972 and had already been
playing with the band before that,” he explains. “I didn’t get out of the
army until 1974, so I wouldn’t even have been there in 1973.”
Heavily influenced by underground bands like New York’s
Velvet Underground, Mirrors were an anomaly in the Cleveland music scene.
Craig says, “To my knowledge, I can’t think of any other band in the
Cleveland area that was doing that kind of stuff at the time we started
doing it. I thought we were the only people in the world doing it.” The
band played a couple of gigs (at a YMCA and a house party) before Craig went
into the army. Paul Marotta briefly filled in on bass before switching to
keyboards, and Jim Jones (later guitarist for Pere Ubu) became the next bass
player.
In 1974 Craig finished his time with the army and
rejoined Mirrors. Craig, Mike, and Jamie were now all living together in a
house on W. 65th and Lorain, and the band began playing out more
often. “We had almost a residency at The Clockwork Orange for a couple of
months,” Craig says. “We did every Tuesday night or something. And of
course we played The Viking Saloon. We were pretty much ignored by people
until we started playing at the Clockwork Orange. When we played there we
actually started getting people to come see us.”
One of the people who saw Craig and Mirrors was Rocket
From the Tombs guitarist Peter Laughner, who would eventually ask Craig to
join his band. “This was towards the end of my time in Mirrors. At that
time Mirrors wasn’t really doing anything. We weren’t even practicing. We
weren’t broken up, we just weren’t doing anything. When Peter asked me
about working with him in Rocket From the Tombs I had a discussion with
Jamie to just say, ‘Look, I’m in Mirrors. This is the band I want to be
in. But if we’re not going to do anything I’m going to do something with
these guys for a while.’ And so I was basically fired. Jamie sent me a
letter and told me my services were no longer needed in Mirrors, which was a
shame, but that’s what happened. I never really knew exactly what the deal
was from his perspective; I just know I wasn’t in the band anymore.”
In addition to Craig and Peter, Rocket From the Tombs
also included vocalist/founding member David Thomas (aka Crocus Behemoth),
guitarist Gene O’Connor (aka Cheetah Chrome) and drummer John Madansky (aka
Johnny Blitz). Madansky was later replaced by Wayne Strick (and for one
show Don Evans). Of his time playing with Rocket From the Tombs, Craig
says, “That band probably lasted, what, 16 or 18 months? It was great when
we were doing it, and when we were focused on getting together the demo tape
that got played on the radio or getting ready to play the show at The Agora
that got played on the radio. That’s all we did. That stuff became the
basis for the whole legacy of Rocket From the Tombs.”
Craig’s contribution to Rocket From the Tombs legacy
goes beyond just providing the basslines and the occasional vocal for the
band. He also contributed his skills as a songwriter. “Muckraker” and
“Frustration” were Bell compositions that had been Mirrors songs previously,
while “Read ‘Em and Weep” was written while for the band. Craig also
co-wrote one of Rocket’s best known songs, “Final Solution”, with David
Thomas. “I wrote a bunch of things, those are just the ones that got used,”
Craig says.
While Rocket From the Tombs is today regarded as a
highly influential and important band in the history of punk rock and
alternative music, they never achieved much renown or commercial success
during their original incarnation. Craig says, “I don’t think we ever saw
ourselves becoming popular. We wanted to make music and play wherever we
could. I remember the tape we made we had given to the producer for Blue
Oyster Cult. Nothing ever came of that, obviously, but we were striving to
be more successful than we were. You can always look back and see what went
wrong where, but at the time I just don’t think anyone was really looking at
the big picture. I know I wasn’t. I can’t really speak for anyone else.
If I had to do it all over again, there were times when things started
happening that I wish I had stood up and said something to keep the ship on
an even keel, but I didn’t. I regret that.”
In August of 1975, Rocket From the Tombs split into two
bands. David Thomas and Peter Laughner formed Pere Ubu, while Gene O’Connor
and original Rockets drummer John Madansky started a band called
Frankenstein, which would eventually become The Dead Boys. Craig was asked
to join both bands, but said no. He explains, “At the time I wanted to do
my own thing. I didn’t know what that own thing was, but I just had to move
on and try something else. For a short period of time I was playing with
Kevin McMahon and doing some stuff with him. I don’t think I was quite as
proficient a player as Kevin was looking for at the time, but I really
enjoyed playing with him and always thought the world of him and his
music.”
In 1976, Craig left Northeast Ohio for Connecticut.
Craig says, “I got a job with Amtrak out on the east coast, so I moved to
New Haven and lived out there until 1989.” But Craig still had the music
bug, and soon was playing in a new band, The Saucers. Craig says, “We put
out a couple of singles in 1979, 1980. We did some recording, we played all
over the place.” Eventually the Saucers mutated into another band called
The Bell System, and Craig continued playing gigs all up and down the east
coast until 1988. “I got to the point where I’d had enough,” says Craig.
“At that time my wife Claudia and I decided to move out here to Indiana.
She was also playing with me in some of those later bands. For a number of
years I didn’t play any music, but eventually we just started playing around
for fun. Now we’re on the verge of starting to play out again with the band
we have here. It’s like in The Godfather, you can never
really leave the family.”
Further proving that you can’t leave the family, in
1996 the seeds for a Rocket From the Tombs reunion were planted. Craig
says, “I was approached by Jimmy Zero of the Dead Boys. He was getting
together this presentation to put on at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame about
the history of Cleveland music. The Rock Hall approached Jimmy to talk
about the punk era or whatever you want to call it, and he asked me if I
wanted to be involved in that.” Craig said sure, and the performance was
actually the first time a full electric band ever played on stage at the
Rock N Roll Hall of Fame.
Although not part of the Rock Hall performance, Rocket/Pere
Ubu vocalist David Thomas was also in town at the time. After the
performance, Craig says he and David got together and, “David played this
tape for me of our last show at The Piccadilly. I didn’t know this tape had
existed up to this point. He asked me, ‘What’s this song here that you’re
singing?’ I listened to it, and it was “Read it and Weep”, but I hadn’t
played it or even thought about it in so long that I couldn’t remember the
title. It was a couple days later that I sent him an email to tell him the
right title.”
Craig continues, “The upshot of that is it led to a CD
coming out. We had been bootlegged forever; our stuff had been on the
radio, cassette tapes had gone around the world. Someone even put out an
album in the mid eighties of that stuff, but all that had nothing to do with
us. Because we had this Picadilly tape no one knew existed, I guess David
decided it was time to put that and some of this other stuff together, do a
good job cleaning it up, and put it out.” The resulting album, ‘The Day the
Earth Met the Rocket From the Tombs’, was released in 2002 by Smogveil
Records.
Then in February of 2003 most of the band got back
together to play live at a music and arts festival David Thomas was putting
on at UCLA called Disastodrome. Craig, David Thomas, and Cheetah Chrome
were joined by guitarist Richard Lloyd (of New York proto punks Television)
and drummer Steve Mehlman, who was playing with Thomas in Pere Ubu at the
time. Original drummer John Madansky sat the event out, and sadly original
Rocket guitarist Peter Laughner had passed away in 1977. Craig says, “We
thought it was going to be a one off thing. Richard Lloyd and Cheetah had
been friends for many years, and he was a perfect fit. So we did that show
and thought that would be it, even though we really enjoyed doing it. We
even said as we were sitting around in the dressing room, ‘jeez, it’s a
shame we have all of this we’ve gone through. We should do something
else.’”
“Something else”, indeed. Buoyed by the success of
that one off gig, the band embarked on a six city tour in June of 2003.
Next they went into Richard Lloyd’s studio in New York to record their live
set. The result was the ‘Rocket Redux’ CD released in 2004, again on
Smogveil Records. Almost 30 years after breaking up, Rocket From the Tombs
finally released their debut studio album. Craig sums up the whole
experience as, “Magic, just incredible.” And though this Rocket has been
grounded since then, Craig says it might just fly again. There was even
some talk of doing an album of new material. Craig says, “It’s still a
possibility. Some ideas have been passed around. David of course is still
working on his projects, he’s a busy guy. Cheetah is a new father; his son
is just about one year old now. And Richard is working on different
things. But I hope it does happen, and it’s still quite feasible.”
Whatever happens, Craig has few regrets about his music
career. Mirrors and Rocket From the Tombs may never have sold millions of
albums, but the music of both bands has had a profound impact on the punk
and alternative rock scenes. Not just in Cleveland, but around the world.
Rocket From the Tombs songs like “Sonic Reducer” and “Final Solution” have
been covered countless times, and the group’s reunion tour exposed them to a
whole new generation of music fans. Craig says, “I remember thinking to
myself when we were playing somewhere and there was this sea of young faces,
‘where were your parents when we needed them?’”
“But there were other times,” Craig continues, “like
when this guy about my age comes up to me in Columbus. He’s raving about
how great it was to see us and he had our tapes all these years. Then he
turns to this girl standing there beaming and says he’s been telling his
daughter about us. And she goes on and on about how great it was, and how
her dad always played our tapes. It was great to see people from all age
spectrums and walks of life that were touched by the bands I was in. Mostly
Rockets, but I’ve also run into a lot of people who knew about Mirrors. And
that really made me feel good, because I always thought that Mirrors was a
great band. Don’t know if we were ahead of time or what the hell we were,
but it was a great band that never really saw the light of day or got the
proper respect they deserved. To this day I think Jamie is an incredible
songwriter, and I still play Mirrors songs he wrote. I just love those
songs and love playing them.” As an unabashed fan myself, all I can say is
I hope Craig keeps playing those songs for a long time to come.
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