Triplets’ Musical Act Is a Camp Trip With Compassion

The Del Rubio Triplets were just three star-struck gals with guitars when they made their way to Hollywood from Washington, D.C., more than 30 years ago, in search of fame and fortune.

“We were Hollywood-mad. We wanted to see where the movie stars live, and breathe the same air. When it would rain, we knew Marilyn Monroe was having rain, too” recalls Eadie Del Rubio (rhythm guitar) as she and her two singing siblings, Milly (lead guitar) and Elena (bass) share a booth in a North Hollywood pizza parlor, taking turns answering questions and eating three identical lunches of minestrone soup and garlic bread.

The triplets always try to eat the same thing, Milly explains in her Ruth-Gordon-sound-alike voice, because it helps them keep identical figures.

Having just concluded a late-morning performance at a Jewish senior citizens’ day center, the Del Rubio Triplets are clad in matching red, white and blue hip-hugging hot-pants ensembles that they fashioned from Danskin leotards jazzed up with tasseled trimming around the neckline, waist and legs. “This is therapy for the men to see legs--to make them think they haven’t lost their sex appeal and so forth,” says Eadie. “And the women feel like they’re going to a show in Vegas or something; they forget they’re in a hospital.”

Two days earlier, the Del Rubio Triplets had made their first appearance on “Late Night with David Letterman,” and they’ll leave town again in a few days for a gig on “Good Morning, America.” When they return, they’ll face their usual full schedule of free shows in hospitals and nursing homes, as well as a concert date at Bebop Records in Reseda at 8 p.m. Tuesday.

Back when the Del Rubios first hit the stage, several singing-sister acts had already made it big: the Andrews Sisters and the McGuire Sisters, for example. But, despite an extensive international touring career that took them to Japan, India, Australia, Europe and South America, the leggy Del Rubio Triplets only recently made it out of Elks halls.

Sisters with less spunk might have given up. But not Milly, Eadie and Elena. Bored with the croony tunes of other sister acts, the vivacious Del Rubios describe themselves as live wires who were just waiting for rock to happen.

They eventually developed an eclectic repertoire of nearly 800 songs in eight languages--everything from “Neutron Dance,” “Walk Like an Egyptian,” “In-a-Gadda-da-Vida,” “ Besame Mucho ,” “Crazy,” “Bill Bailey,” and “God Bless America.” They always managed to stay busy enough with small-time gigs to avoid the necessity of day jobs while eagerly awaiting that Big Break.

When their mother lay dying in a local hospital 15 years ago, the triplets gathered around her bedside and, a capella , serenaded her with “Stardust” and other melodies. “Her favorite song was “You Belong to My Heart,” Eadie recalls. “We sang that to her every day.”

Soon, Milly says, they were a hospital hit. “Everybody on the floor asked the nurses, ‘What is that pretty sound I hear in the distance?’ So the nurses asked us to go into their rooms, too.”

After their mother died, “all of us got a strong feeling that this was a vocation, because what we did to these patients was more than just entertaining them, we really did therapy,” she says. “It’s some power from up above that shows our love and our care--a sunny vitality.”

The Del Rubio Triplets believed that God had a mission for them. They quit pursuing the commercial end of the business and dedicated themselves to performing their high-energy renditions of popular songs free in hospitals and nursing homes throughout the Southland.

It was after giving up commercial show biz that the self-proclaimed “International Song Stylists” were suddenly discovered by the young rock ‘n’ rollers of Hollywood and the Sunset Strip.

Decked out in identical blonde bouffant coifs, miniskirts, and white ankle-high go-go boots, the triplets have now played the Roxy, Club Lingerie and Stock Exchange.

They’ve been written about in People, Billboard, Spin and Exposure and recently cut their first album, “Three Gals, Three Guitars,” on the Blue Yonder label. But they still do up to four or five gigs a day at nursing homes, accompanied only by the three Martin guitars they’ve had since their teens and “two fingers,” Milly’s term for the percussion she provides by rapping on the side of her instrument.

“Adequate” is the way one anonymous music expert--and devoted fan--frankly describes the Del Rubio Triplets’ musical talents. “Not brilliant . . . but highly competent,” was the judgment of Music Connection critic Frank Holly. But it would be a mistake to attribute their appeal strictly to their music, which consists of bare-bones cover versions of an incredible range of popular songs.

Nor is their growing popularity merely the result of their camp value, which is considerable. (These are, after all, three more-than-middle-aged triplets in hot pants singing, for example, “Light My Fire.”)

A more likely reason that audiences of all ages embrace the Del Rubio Triplets is their infectious, sincere enthusiasm for all kinds of music, especially rock ‘n’ roll.

“Before rock came in, when we used to do our act, the only thing we could resort to to give us an outlet for this high energy was our Spanish blood,” Milly explains. Now, in addition to a generous amount of Spanish numbers, the Del Rubios include songs by their favorites, Marvin Gaye, Lionel Ritchie and Stevie Wonder. They say they’d also love to work up some songs by “that Jackson kid.”

In live appearances, the Del Rubio Triplets address their audience without any of the slick posturing often associated with longtime shows for lounge lizards. “We learned through doing hospitals a new technique, which we now use in our professional work on stage, and that is to be homey ,” says Milly. “We start talking to them like we’re in our living room.”

Their between-song patter may include a discourse on the cost of room service in New York ($15 apiece for breakfast!), the unusually late dinner hour in Spain (which is good, because it means the triplets can always find restaurants open after their gigs), or what a charmer Johnny Carson is (unlike Letterman, he graciously deigned to speak with them after they appeared on his show).

After more than 30 years of club dates, the Del Rubio Triplets are finally hot. But they’re not about to go Hollywood now.

They still make their own costumes. (They have to, they explain; it seems nobody’s making hot pants anymore.) They still drive their own green ’72 station wagon to their gigs and act as their own roadies, unloading, setting up, and reloading their equipment.

Having fled their Hollywood apartment several years ago because of ever-increasing rents, the three sisters now live in a triple-sized mobile home in San Pedro; all three sleep, as Eadie puts it, “like Goldilocks and the three bears” in one bedroom.

Although they’ve all been in love, none has ever married. “Even for individuals to make a go of marriage and still have a career is almost impossible--it’s the hardest thing in the world,” Eadie explains. “Then, with the three of us, it’s even worse; with us, it would be the competition with the three. He’s got to share, without wanting to, the hours that we want to be with each other to work on our music.”

“Anytime we’ve been serious, the fellow wants us to continue the music, but his way. In other words, it’s not 100% dedication like we are now,” Elena chimes in. “They want a home and children and so forth, and we really don’t want that. We want our music really to come first, until we feel we’ve had enough.”