The Mysterious Mind
Of
Question Mark
Question Mark
is an enigma, part child, part genius with just a touch of Louis Carroll. He is
as charming as he is vexing. He is the perfect rock & roller, a man-child
who believes in the power of music. He is more talented than most people
realize. He is a completely unique singer with an approach that is both raw and
nuanced. His moves onstage are as natural as a Jungian protégé just learning
about the spirituality of dance and how the human body can twist and turn and
even defy gravity. From 1966 through 1968 Question Mark & the Mysterians
released 5 charting songs. 96 Tears (#1 in the U.S. 1966), I Need Somebody
(#22, 1966), Can’t Get Enough of You Baby (#58, 1967 – later covered by Smash
Mouth), Girl (You Captivate Me, #98, 1968), Do Something To Me (#110, 1968 –
pushed off the charts by Tommy James version). A number of incredible musicians
have passed through the band including local icon Pete Woodman (Bossmen, Popcorn
Blizzard –drummer 1967), Chris Currell (1969 – later recorded and toured with
Michael Jackson) and Mel Schacher (Grand Funk). Question Mark is sometimes
difficult to understand even in his best moments. His strength is in his mysterious
persona but it’s also his Achilles heel. It must be exhausting to keep up the
role of an eternal maverick. After years of disappointment and relative
obscurity, Question Mark continued to develop his craft as a songwriter. It’s something
of a heavily defended secret, hidden away in the unhinged canyons of his mind. A
case in point; He wrote a song in the immediate aftermath of 9-11. It was a beautiful
piano based ballad. Question Mark’s nuanced and restrained vocals were perfect
with high harmonies soaring in the background. He called it New York City and
though he never mentioned 9-11 the music and lyrics carried the sorrow with an
unspoken dignity. It is a stoned
masterpiece, one of the best songs I’ve ever heard. It’s never been released.
So the saga continues…
OK. I’m going
to ask you about your career. This is the first question. What led you to have
an interest in music?
(Laughter) I
was born again… right - and because I’ve lived many different lives, I’ve been
in music many different times even in the beginning when you guys called us
like cavemen, we never called ourselves cavemen.
What I’m interested
in is your career. I heard you started out as a dancer or as a promoter. Is
that true?
I’ve always been a famous person, right, in many
different fields. I’m going to come back again. I’m a messenger. Everything I’m
going to tell you during this interview is about this moment in my life, it’s
going to get even stronger because I’m going to get into other things like directing,
movies, choreography -all those kind of things.
I’ve talked
with Bobby(Balderama) about the very beginning of the band with your brother
Robert
Like I tell
everybody, I’m the vehicle. I need people to follow my lead, whether it’s when
I come back to perform or when I start to change things up. I’ve talked about
this before. I know what I want to do because I see what’s happening in the
industry and in science and medicine.
I understand you may have a book coming out
I’ll do it if I can get a publisher to offer a
decent money deal. There are also a lot of people who are interested in making
a movie with me. You know people can talk about it but where’s the money,
where’s the deal… you know what I’m saying. I’m on Facebook and I’m getting out
there more often and all these people are my Facebook Friends. They’ve posted pictures
from a time I was in London. It’s on my Facebook page. I have an interview
posted. I’m making a few comments because I want everybody to know my point of
view. Actually, I can’t say it all in those comments because I’m typing with
one finger…(Laughter). I think my fans
like it. I make a picture of everything… I’ve done several interviews and many
of them are archived now. I did one in New Mexico that played on Easter. I did another interview with Rick Stevers the
drummer from Frigid Pink There’s a lot of interest out there. I’ve had an
interview recently with Larry Weisman - over two and a half hours. We’ve talked
about ancient peoples, the future and we talked about Mars. He’s well read. I
told him I’m going to say something on the radio that nobody has said about
Jesus. So I said, “It’s going to be real…” and then I stopped. I said, “Oh, I
got to do something,” right? In other words, I’m leaving them hanging,
wondering whether it’s going to make sense or not. (Laughter)
It sounds
like you have some really spiritual leanings.
I tell it like it is, right? It’s going to be
really cool, but I ain’t going to tell you what it is exactly. So our Creator
created me as a human and I was born into a Mexican ethnic group and then lived
in the environment that I was born into - it’s not the Kennedys or the
Rockefellers - in my case it was migrant workers out in a shack.
Well, let’s
go back to something that the fans all want to hear about. When did you write
96 Tears? How did you come up with the inspiration?
Okay. I was writing songs about rock & roll before
96 Tears charted. The very first recording I made was Rockin’ Pneumonia &
the Boogie Woogie Flu by Huey Smith and the Clowns. I didn’t do it right away
because I didn’t know if the record had been released. I used to say that I’ve
been on stage all my life. Somebody put me on stage and it’s meant for me to be
on stage. I started out dancing and suddenly a thought popped in my head,
“You’re going to start singing.” I thought, “Singing? I’m a dancer.” See, I
thought that was God giving me some direction. So that was in my thoughts and
then all of a sudden I started singing these lyrics. Finally when I got enough
money and saved $7.49, I sent for “Make Your Own Recordings.” I never wanted to
be a recording star. I wanted to go on American Bandstand or the Arthur Murray
Dance show. I’d seen Arthur Murray on TV with his wife, Kay - and they inspired
me. After watching them I wanted to go to Broadway. Those were my goals.
So bring it
around to 96 Tears. I want to hear the story about that.
This was the first time I thought maybe I could
sing and once I started singing, I began making my own lyrics even though I was
really just a dancer at that time, right? Rockin’ Pneumonia and Boogie Woogie
Flu was my first song. I tried to save enough money but being poor and things
like that I tried everything I could think of like selling produce house to
house - apples, bananas, all that. And that’s how I finally got my money. I
sent off for that record, it was a small cardboard thing with a little handle,
a little microphone and it was square.
What happened
next?
When I heard my recording, it was so tinny. I
didn’t know what it was to record at a studio or nothing like that, right…that’s
why I tell people, “You do the best with what you got until you can get what
you want.”
I had my
sisters and cousins doing back-up singing. I was into sounds. So the first song
was called the “Shake ‘em and Roll - it’s a dance…gets everyone to work out and
things like that. A little girl would come out, start dancing and shaking it,
doing the “Shake ‘Em and Roll,” right? Then all the boys from the neighborhood
would come around and they’d be looking at them. Mom would come out and say,
“Girls, you better stop dancing like that.” I used the word “booty” at that
time.
Did you have to write 96 Tears over and over again before you got it
right? I mean, did you have to really work at it?
Nope. I never sit down and write a song. I sing whatever
I hear in my head. I was writing lyrics in my head and I sang them to the band
so I don’t have to write them down. But to make a long story short I want to
learn how to play the piano, right? So I asked my parents to take me to the
piano store, and they actually took me. I saw all of these beautiful pianos,
and I was playing the keys - it sounded
good. My parents were willing to sacrifice everything, being really poor, so I
could play the piano. I decided that I didn’t want my parents to get into debt
for the rest of their lives so I asked for a tape recorder instead. It cost
$179, even that that was a lot of money because they had to make payments. It
was a bulky tape recorder with seven-inch reels. It was the first time I sang
96 Tears when I took that recorder back home with me. Now I had a tape recorder
so I could hear myself.
I think
you’re a unique singer and you write wonderful songs.
Yeah, but that’s my gift from my Creator.
I think that 96 Tears is a punk garage classic.
What do you think?
It’s not.
Tell me more
about the beginnings of 96 Tears?
I took one
piano lesson back in ’65 or so. I lived on the poor side of town, so I had to
go to the rich side of town for the lesson, right? I had never been in that
side of town and I’m walking and green grass, nice looking houses, white
fences, the dogs are barking at me, and people are looking out the window at me
because I don’t belong in that neighborhood. Finally I knock on the door. A man
about 55 years old opens the door, gray hair, pudgy, bifocals and he waltzes me
downstairs. He had panel on his wall, carpet in the basement. I thought this
guy is rich. So we sat at the piano. I wanted to learn how to do the music in
my head but he wanted me to start from the beginning, Mary Had a Little Lamb
and chopsticks and things like that. I said, “No, no, no. I want to do the
music in my head. That’s what I want.” He told me to sing me one of my songs. That’s
when I sang 96 Tears and I heard the melody come alive. He said, “I tell you
what. For $10 a week, I’ll teach you how to play the music in your head.” I
said to myself, “I don’t even have a penny in my pocket. I ain’t never coming
back” (Laughter). On the way back home, I’m singing 96 Tears and the melody is in
my head.
When did the
Mysterians get together?
It was in 1962, somebody heard me singing… I was
all the time singing - and back then Bobby Balderama and Robert were playing a
little bit. Bobby didn’t live in Saginaw. He lived in Auburn, you know. Little
Frank’s from Bay City, Frank Lugo was from Reese. Robert was in Vassar or Indian
River at the time. We started out at Larry Borjas’ house in Saginaw. I brought
my cousin to pick me up. He had bongos, right? I mean, we’re coming out of the
beatnik era, duh. Remember that era when everybody was playing bongos.
If you want
to know anything about rock and roll music ask Question Mark. He’s the man.
That’s the truth. I came in and I saw rock and roll
in its early days. I was dancing, doing the jitterbug, winning contests, right?
Right away they started playing the Ventures music. They didn’t have any
singers but somebody heard me singing and that’s why we went over there. My
cousin’s got the bongos. He started playing to the beat and all that stuff.
Then I just started singing, right? So we started doing songs that were on the
radio. It was ‘62 or ’63. Little Frank wasn’t in the group ‘til August of ’65.
Now let’s
talk about your new album called R&R.
It stands
for rock and roll, right? And there is an album after that. By that time we
should have a nice concert set. We hope to create a lot of interest so we can
have a great live album produced with a nice sound. Naturally, that’ll be
Question Mark and the Mysterians Live.
Yeah, so
right now you have three albums in the works, right? With the fourth being the
live album?
Yeah but Bobby’s busy now with his jazz band and he
doesn’t have a lot of time. I made him a copy of our last (unreleased) LP for
his hard drive with all the separate tracks but then the fire happened. In the
last three years we’ve been trying to find all the tapes and then last year I
told ABKCO about this song I’ve written “New York City.” Everybody loves the
song. I told Bobby about the third album and it would be without a female
singer, right - but I still want to produce it because Bobby has the masters.
I saw the show that you did with the Vogues
and Ronnie Spector all the ‘60s acts. You were great. It seemed to me that you
had to get some kind of acclaim after that performance because you stole the
show. Were agents and concert promoters knocking on your door after that?
Well I got a few calls, right? Another thing, like
I said, they want us every year overseas. We played in Greece in the year 2000,
right and we had an offer from Greece to play there again in 2003. But nobody
wanted to fly. I was building my house at that time, right, and I really don’t
want to fly, not unless the money was going to be there. Bobby Balderama books us most of the time.
Have your
arrangements changed through the years?
I used to open the show with “What Time Is It -
It’s Time to Rock and Roll” with a lot of energy. We had a different way of
doing it when we rolled it out in 2000. I said, “Okay now we’re going to do it
like this,” because I wanted it up-tempo and heavy. We’re going to go like
“diddle, diddle, diddle, diddle…, now go doodle, doodle, doom…” The same run,
right? And the band said, “Question Mark, we’re not a heavy metal band or
anything like that. I said, “It’s not heavy metal. I just like getting that
heavy beat.”
Did you
record with another band after the original Mysterians disbanded?
Yes, I wanted a saxophone player, right? This was
in 19…something - I did four recordings in Bakersfield, original songs. I had
three saxophone players, baritone, tenor, and alto sax, really cool sounds. In
fact, one of them said, “Man, you ought to give that to Rick Derringer. He
would like that.” I still have the masters. I love to harmonize myself. If I
can’t blend it, I’ll double-layer myself to get the effect that I want. Anyway,
I did those four songs. I still have the masters. I just got to find the
eight-track and the one-inch tabs.
What’s new
with the Mysterians
Oh, now I want to get a saxophone player in the
group because we were doing this one song that Little Frank was sort of
jamming, and it’s called, “Say It from the Heart.” Dynamite song. We performed
it a few times live. We used to do “Stormy Monday” all the time, but we dropped
from the setlist. I want to bring it back into the show because people want to
hear that,”
You’ve been
together as a band for all these years on and off, and you know each other
very, very well. You probably love each other is my guess, and that gives you
room to be angry too.
I don’t get angry. I just know what I want.
Remember, I’m the arranger, I’m the producer, I’m the writer. I tell the guys
that I want their ideas. You see I’m music 24/7. I love to create music. My new
music is different and I had put it on tape and played it to them… and it was
sweet. “Don’t Play That Song, He Lies,” - a whole different arrangement. It had double harmony leads in the beginning
and all that kind of stuff, and I still have the recordings. To make a long
story short, I want to bring that song back with a big guitar riff.
I want you to
tell me about Lily Gonzales and her connection to Neil Bogart and
Cameo-Parkway, back when she sold the contract to them, you know for like for
sixty grand. You got sold. What did you say to Lily?
I never said nothin’ to her, Lily already sold us.
I finally got the contract in 1999, she sold us for $150,000. The first
installment was $60,000, another was $90,000. I talked to Allen Klein about
this personally. I confronted him because I wanted to see that contract. At
about that time Lily told us to come over
to the studio on the week of September 24 to record, right? Well we did
that in the wintertime, about a 12-hour drive in the snow and we get there, and
everything was fine - the whole year of 1967 - the recordings and touring and
everything, and now we are with Neil Bogart:
“Okay Neil,
we’re here to record.” He says, “We’re not going to record you.” Just like
that, right? I said, “What? We were told to come here.” He replies, “But we’re
not going to record you.” I fought back,“Oh yes you are because I know what my
contract said.” I called Lily. “You got my contract?” “No, I don’t have it.”
Naturally now I know she did have it. I never got my copy though. I still can’t
get my copy, right? It’s a long story…
It must have
felt like a betrayal.
Well everything that happened to us, every
recording we made, even Hot and Groovin’ we did at the 11 Mile Road studio.
See, we’re jumping around too much. I went all over to plug the records, right?
Everybody was playing 96 Tears, 102 was playing it, 105. The only radio station
that wasn’t playing it was WTAC. I went to them, and I said, “How come you’re
not playing it?” He said, “There’s no records in the store.” So I called Guy
down at 11 Mile Road, right, and I asked him why there’s no records in the
store and he told me that he went bankrupt. Here was promoting the song,
everybody’s playing it, you know, and now there’s no records. Duh.
How many
labels have you been on, Question Mark, and which labels did you like the most?
Which label treated you the best?
It wasn’t
Cameo-Parkway. Hello? They all treated me wrong, every one of ‘em. Every one of
them! And every one of them knew the story how the other one did me, and they
said, “Well, Question Mark, that’s why we’re going to give you what you want,”
and then they turned around and did the same dang thing as before. When I moved
on to another record company I tell them all I want my mixes. I never had my
mixes and all that kind of stuff and they tell me I’m going to get the mixes -
then they turn around and do the same thing the other companies did. One of
issues was about the album cover. I could have stopped every recording except
for 96 Tears when that first came out but I didn’t know. My only ignorance at
that time was that once something was pressed, I could still change it. That’s
my only ignorance as far as that goes, but then I trusted Lily, you know? She
had an attorney. He drew up all the papers, my recording contract with her, my
recording contract with the musicians, and things like that with the parents
signing the contracts.
What is your
inspiration, how do you keep on going?
I want everybody to know if you’re in the same
circumstances, you’re going to have those kind of bumps, right? And don’t turn
to alcohol and drugs. To make a long story short when we took the record to #1,
they were playing the Bossmen, they were playing whoever was on the Lucky
Eleven and all that kind of stuff on the radio, right? But now I’ve taken my
record to WKNX and the first thing Bob Dyer says is, “Well, Question Mark, it’s
not top 40. It’s not nation-wide.” I told myself that I guess I know why. Mm-hm. Without coming out and saying it. I
just keep on going, right?
How did it
finally breakout?
So I know the DJ is going to play it. Now see the
group, they don’t want 96 Tears. They want Midnight Hour to be released as then
A side. We decided to take a vote. Oh, I’m already going to be outvoted. Duh.
So I told myself that the next thing, I’m going to go to the radio station and
I’m going to tell them to flip the side over. So anyway 15 minutes down the
road we’re at McDonald’s on Holland Road, driving around, listening to WSAM.
We’re driving around and the guy comes on, “This is a new record by a group in
the tri-cities. They call themselves Question Mark and the Mysterians, Midnight
Hour,” right? This was like May. So all of a sudden we come on. Yeah, it’s
exciting but I said, “Man, it’s got to be 96 Tears. I’m going to go tomorrow
and I’m going to tell the guy to flip it over. I don’t care if the Mysterians
get mad or not,” right? The next day I went to the studio and told them, “I
want 96 Tears,” and they didn’t like it but they flipped it over. And that’s
the way it went...
After 96 Tears hit big, the girls would come around
and ask my name and I’d say, “ I will if you can you read my mind because I’m
telling you my name” (Laughter). It was great, but let me tell you when the
girls asked Bobby about me he’d say, “I don’t even know his name”
(Laughter)
There was a
show in 1969 at the First Congregational Church that included all the bands
from Buddah Records. What memories do
you have about that show?
The most important memory I remember was talking to
the saxophone player from the 1910 Fruitgum Company, right? And he said, “Boy, I’d like to get inside
your head.” (Laughter).
I’m trying
to get a hold of this guy who was in my band at the time but I can’t find him
anywhere. His name is Chris Currell. I remember he played keyboards for Michael
Jackson. He even went on tour with Michael.
Dig this. After he left the group
I went to his house in Saginaw, right? He played a song that we wrote together
called “Blackbird.” After spending
several months in California he came back to Saginaw and he still had the
recording of Blackbird. I’d love to release it. Basically Chris and I were
writing songs together. I was living in Flint at that time, right, across from
Genesee Valley.
Any last comments?
When you go to YouTube, the
first comment on there, “Hot N’ Groovin” -
it says this would have been one of the greatest groups ever if they
would’ve continued. We did continue. We never stopped...
Question Mark & The Mysterians are making a
rare local appearance @ White’s Bar Saturday July 27th 4pm-10pm.
Admission is $10. Tickets are available at White’s Bar and through etix.com
White Mystery (Chicago), The Mongrels and the Jack Diamonds Band will open the
show.
The legend continues!
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