July 1975
CREEM
Hi! I went to sleep the other night after reading your last issue and I had the weirdest dream. I dreamt that the world went through a total nuclear holocaust and the only thing that survived was a magazine. After the world started to repopulate, the people discovered the magazine and hailed it as their god and set their lives after the lives of the people in the magazine.
THE CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Robert Christgau
Blue Oyster Cult: “On Your Feet or on Your Knees" (Columbia). I can’t imagine ever learning something new from this group again—its concept has worn out—but this live double-lp, proof that they’ve finally earned the right to release quickie product, is a fit testament.
ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS
Bod Stewart and Maggie Bell recording a single together of an unnamed Neil Young song. Harry Nilsson punched out a drunken patron at an L.A restaurant after the man walked up to Nilsson's table, apparently on a dare, and poured a drink over Harry's head.
THE BEAT GOES ON
Marylou Capes
NEW YORK-Two hundred of New York’s finest fourth estaters, from Screw to the New York Times to CREEM gathered in Feathers Restaurant in the fashionable Fifth Avenue Hotel awaiting word from the Rolling Stones about their summer tour. After 45 minutes of lunchnibbling and cocktailing, the press corps was ushered to a conference room, which had five empty chairs and five silent microphones.
BOB SEGEER: Beautiful (Maybe), Loser (No Way)
Lowell Cauffiel
One just can’t help but wonder why Bob Seger hasn’t given up and retired to a smoother life, like entertaining his dogs, friends and relatives with a Yamaha guitar through Michigan’s long winter nights.
LEO SAYER: Nobody’s Clown
Ed Naha
Trenton, New Jersey is not the likeliest place to go hunting for good vibes.
Scaramouche Of The Synthesizer
Frank Rose
Brian Peter George Eno (Eno is his last name), the scaramouche of the synthesizer—in Europe they may call him an artiste, but here in roughneck America anyone who looks like this is just another one of them glit twits. Can such a blanket characterization hold true?
Extension Chords
Don’t Wrap It, Cose It!
Larry Jaffe
There are many equipment case manufacturers around the country.
Features
GRAND FUNK: SUPER PATRIOTS COME CLEAN
JAAN UHELSZKI
AND STILL MANAGE TO TILL SOME DIRT
SPARKS: From Taco Bell To Fish 'n' Chips
Robert Duncan & David Surkamp
“Doris Day’s Sons In Town To Play Concert” read the dynamic headline in Copenhagen.
Features
NILSSON: DRUNK WITH JOHN, GEORGE, RINGO AND...
ADAM BLOCK
Former part-time composer Harrry Nilsson left behind seven years as a bank clerk “when I heard the Monkees singing my ‘Cuddly Toy’ on the radio.”
JUNGLE MUSIC
Greil Marcus
We open in a crowded country music bar where Elvis Presley is singing “Don’t Be Cruel.” Halfway through the song a drunk staggers to the stage and vomits all over Elvis’ blue suede shoes. El smashes him with his guitar and suddenly the place is in chaos.
Features
Crazy Teens and Killer QUEEN
Cynthia Dagnal
With its mixture of ghouls, glits and glams beside the local Latins, street people and punks, Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom seems the perfect place for Queen.
ROCK DREAMS CONTEST WINNERS
The artist, David T. Kearns, tells us about himself: "The original was done in '68 when I was at school in N.T.C. I work in a factory now." Factory? This guy's lucky he ain't committed! His "Jimi Hendrix at the Kennedy Assassination" was probably the most bizarre juxtaposition in any of the entries.
Features
PUNCH & JUDY PLAY THE TOILETS
Lester Bangs
It looks good on your resume...
Steve Hunter & Dick Wagner: The Guitars That Destroyed The Stars
Lester Bangs
Alice is certainly lucky in one respect, he’s got what may well be the finest rock ‘n’ roll band in America backing him up on this tour. Steve Hunter, Dick Wagner, Jozef Chirowsky, Prakash John and Whitey Glan came from disparate backgrounds to form one of the most respected and prestigious session bands in the business, and what’s even better news is that they may soon quit being underpinnings for the stars and take to the road and the studio on their own, with their own material.
Neal & Glen & Dennis & Mike: Supergroup on Ice
Jaan Uhelszki
If you had been in one of the world’s most successful rock bands, how would you like to be left in the dust of vinyl history? The former members of the original Alice Cooper band aren t content to sit on their dwindling assets either. Originally, after the Billion Dollar Babies tour, the group, instead of calling, it a day, decided to call it a year — taking a much needed vacation from rock and roll and each other after spending ten years of starving and starring together.
ELEGANZA
Lisa Robinson
The first thing you learn when you’re really up close to rock stars is that they’re always much shorter than you thought they were. With few exceptions, the onstage or magazine page deception is amazing. When I once remarked to Robert Plant how Roger Daltrey seemed such a midget in person, Robert replied in his typically modest fashion, “Well, it’s only me who can be as glorious as I really am.”
Rewire Yourself
Cleaning Up A Dirty Groove
Richard Robinson
I never realized what evil lurks in a record’s grooves.
CREEM Record Labels
Creemedia
Bette Midler Goes To (Summer) Camp
David Tipmore
The piranhas of the New York press proved to be a cold fish audience at a preview of Bette Midler’s “Clams on the Half Shell Revue.”
Lesley’s Turn To Fly
Carola Dibbell
Mercifully, Barry Manilow and Peter Allen are on the audience side of the tiny checkerboard stage. The place is Reno Sweeney New York, and the reason is Lesley Gore, who scalded her name into rock and roll history (retroactively) with its first feminist anthem, “You Don’t Own Me.”
Creemedia
Turn Cybill Sheperd Upside Down
Jackie Kallen
It would be nice to be able to say that Cybill Shepherd, the ex-model-turned-actress, is more than just another pretty face.
FILM FOX
If the New York Times can call Towering Inferno the year’s best endof-the-world movie, then CREEM can certainly peg Rollerball as next year’s best end-of-the-next-world movie. It stars James Caan and John Houseman who fight to the death in a violent game of basketball.
BOOKS
Tom McCarthy
The Wanderers are an Italian street gang in the Bronx during the early Sixties. Existing in an era when most of the large New York street gangs had been wiped out by heroin, the Wanderers, like Peckinpah’s Wild Bunch, are a group whose time has passed.
RICK WAKEMAN DROWNS IN SUDS!
LESTER BANGS
Records
Bad Company’s Golden Plod
Jaan Uhelszki
Bad Company was conceived by a collection of musical misfits.
Records
Slouching Toward Number One
Wayne Robins & Georgia Christgau
Kangaroos, pina cola das, rum and coke, crucifixions.
Creemedia
WHEN LENNY WAS FUNNY
Tony Clover
Okay, let’s face it; things have got a bit out of hand here. Lenny Bruce has become not only a martyred near saint, but also one hellofa commercial property—plays, movies, books, T-shirts (watch for the cocktail napkins). Sure he was a funny cat, sure he was hassled a lot—and ain’t junkies always romantic after they’re dead?
ROCK A RAMA
CHER - Stars (Warner Bros.)::It might have sold a million in the days when she sang harmonies and wrote answers to pre-teens about parents and pimples, but Cher has risen above that audience. Now she tries to appeal to those who expect a little talent and this album shows few signs of it.
Stars Cars
Robert Plant