Around the Ottawa Region Media Group offices, we’d always
known that one of our advertising salespeople was in a band back in the 1960s.
We just didn’t know how big and how influential that band
was.
A few weeks ago, a CBC national radio show that draws an
audience of more than one million listeners spun a single by the Haunted. Vinyl
Café host Stuart McLean chose the song 1-2-5 as one of the top-10 Canadian rock
’n’ roll singles of all time.
Bob Burgess, now 65, co-wrote the song, and sang the lyrics
for the Haunted, back when the band recorded the single in 1965.
“1-2-5 was probably one of the first things I wrote,”
Burgess says. “I’ve been writing ever since.”
The Haunted played bars and clubs around their native
Montreal. The band won time in a recording studio at a “battle of the bands,”
beating out David Clayton Thomas and the Fabulous Shays. Clayton Thomas went on
to become the lead singer Blood, Sweat and Tears.
The free studio time was used to record 1-2-5.
Burgess says 1-2-5 went to number 2 in Canada on RPM
Magazine’s record charts. The RPM charts are tough to track down these days,
but one printed on Jan. 8, 1966, shows 1-2-5 in the number 43 position, nestled
between the Beatles’ Paperback Writer and Bob Dylan’s I Want You.
Burgess has traded mop-top hair, a guitar and the stage for
a suit, valise and workstation. He wears a Bluetooth headset as he leaves the
office to meet clients. Then add in a pair of dark, wraparound sunglasses to
the outfit – his way of showing he doesn’t completely conform to expectations –
and a permanent case of the chuckles, and that’s Burgess today. Easy going.
MELTING POT
Montreal in the mid-’60s was a happening place, Burgess
says, with healthy soul and rock scenes. He went to see many R&B acts: Sam
and Dave, Joe Tex, Solomon Burke.
He says they all played the Esquire Show Bar, which drew a
mix of black and white kids, and the audience arrived from both the English and
French halves of Montreal.
“As long as there was music, everything was cool,” Burgess
says. “Everybody mixed. It didn’t matter. As long as you were good musicians,
you played.”
It was in that creative and open-minded atmosphere that he
met Jurgen Peter, his co-writer on 1-2-5.
The pair had the same influences as the Stones and the
Kinks, Burgess says. It’s a relationship that’s easy to hear on the band’s
video, which can be found at the bottom of this webpage. Burgess is the dark-haired lead
singer, on the right of the screen.
Deciding who would be the band’s lead singer was not a
perfect science.
“We played instrumentals and we decided we needed a singer,”
he says. “We threw a microphone over a pipe and took turns singing. I guess I
sounded best so I had to sing.”
Various websites and CD liner notes describe the Haunted as
garage or punk, even though those terms weren’t used back in 1965.
“It was rock,” Burgess says, adding that the recording
quality may throw people off. “It only sounds ‘garage’ because of the
production; it sounds bad.”
The song 1-2-5 took off, but the band’s record label didn’t
support the Haunted with a larger pressing of the single or much in the way of
publicity, even when there was interest from south of the border.
“We would have made it huge; there was demand,” Burgess
says. “There was a radio station in Albany, (N.Y.) that requested 1,000 copies,
but Quality (the record label) wouldn’t do it.”
The band recorded its second single in New York City, and
Burgess recalls partying with Eric Burdon, of Animals fame, and Roger McGuinn
of the Byrds. A few years later the Haunted opened for the Animals in Montreal.
Asked to share some other crazy stories, Burgess appears to
be choosing his memories selectively.
“We hung out with the Esquires here in Ottawa once,” he
says. “We were kicked out of every hotel on Montreal Road. Their bass player
rode his motorcycle right into the hotel room there.”
Mention of the word groupies has Burgess choosing his words
carefully too.
“I lost my shirt on a couple of occasions,” he said. “I knew
enough to run away when there were 40 or 50 of them.”
Despite follow-up singles that kept audiences filling the bars
and clubs, the original lineup of the band didn’t last.
“We got into ego things,” Burgess says.
After four singles, Burgess departed, citing differences
with Peter.
The Haunted went through more lineup changes after he
departed, with 15 different musicians playing in the band at one point or
another. The sound varied from flowery lyrics to blues, including a rather
bizarre French version of the Jimi Hendrix hit Purple Haze, renamed Vapeur
Mauve. The Haunted finally broke up in 1969.
More than 20 of the band’s songs were compiled for CD
release in 1995, a disc available through amazon.ca.
“We all get along now,” Burgess says, despite any issues
about publishing rights.
“I still get royalty cheques, but they’re not exactly large.”
After leaving the band, Burgess ended up as music director
for CFCF radio in Montreal, one of the city’s biggest English-language
stations.
From there he moved to Vancouver, later settling in Ottawa.
Burgess says he didn’t hear the Vinyl Café segment on the band, but did get a
call from the former lead guitarist the next day.
“Al (Birmingham) phoned me,” he says, adding he heard the
same news from friends and co-workers over the next few days.
The attention of CBC-Radio has Burgess in the mood to talk
about the Haunted’s heyday. He says he recently heard some live tapes of the
band playing in the 1960s; tapes he didn’t know existed.
“The band was very good,” Burgess says. “I never realized
until later, I never realized we were good. That’s something to be proud of.”
If you live in the Stittsville area and want to do a little
jamming, contact Bob Burgess at 613-221-6227.
STUART MCLEAN PICKS 1-2-5
The voice may be the most recognizable in Canada.
Even on a scratchy cellphone from somewhere in Alberta,
CBC-Radio host Stuart McLean’s twang sounds like you’re talking to your
favourite grandpa.
More than a million people listen to McLean as he hosts the
Vinyl Café each week. The show – an amalgam of great storytelling and music –
is heard on CBC Radio, some National Public Radio stations in the United
States, on satellite radio and on the Internet.
McLean recently chose 1-2-5 as one of this country’s top-10
rock ’n’ roll singles of all time. The 1966 hit by the Haunted was co-written
and sung by Bob Burgess, who now works in advertising sales at Ottawa Region
Media Group, the company that publishes this newspaper.
“It’s a great song,” McLean says of 1-2-5. “I chose it to
represent the band scene then. You know, when the Beatles came along, every
town had an explosion in the local band scene and Montreal, where I grew up,
had its explosion.
“There was the Beatles side of the street and the Rolling
Stones side of the street, and the Haunted were on the Rolling Stones side.
1-2-5 symbolizes all the great music that was coming out across the country.
This song captured all that.”
McLean said mid-’60s Montreal had a folk scene, a soul scene
and rock scene.
“They were the Rolling Stones of Montreal,” he said of the
Haunted. “They had a huge following and they could easily have broken big.”
McLean has some music trivia right at his fingertips: the
Haunted’s only LP, a self-titled effort issued in 1966, “is the holy grail of
Canadian record collectors.” The record-collecting website orangevintagevinyl.com
confirms it, describing the album this way: “This puppy rarely comes to market
and if you’re lucky enough to find a copy be prepared to spend $1,000-$1,500+
for a mint copy…or more.”
McLean said he was more a fan of folk music back when the
Haunted were filling Montreal’s clubs in the 1960s, but he’s come to love
1-2-5.
“It was pure growling rock ’n’ roll, as good as Louie Louie.”