On a Rockabilly Roll: Hard-Core Fans Live the Part : Young Musical Rebels Find ‘50s Are Still Nifty

Quentin Roberts, sporting a $125 leather jacket, opened the door of his cherry-colored ’57 Chevy 210 Bel Air and edged inside, careful not to muss his jet black pompadour. He backed the Chevy next to his two other cars: a ’54 Oldsmobile Holiday Coupe and a ’56 Nash Metropolitan. All three automobiles are parked at his parents’ home in Woodland Hills, where Roberts, a 20-year-old hotel desk supervisor, holds court and occasionally stages a rockabilly party. The last, on Oct. 22, drew about 150 people.

The Roberts’ garage has been converted into “the pad,” which includes a rack of bowling shirts and bolo ties, ‘50s memorabilia and a stack of Hot Rod magazines. For Roberts and his friends, the pad is the nerve center for a thriving rockabilly movement, after many fans had given it up for dead.

Leading the movement are young, hard-core rockabilly fans who follow such local groups as the Russell Scott Band and the Rockin’ Rebels from the Palomino Club in North Hollywood to One West in Pasadena to the Anticlub in Hollywood to Fast Freddy’s Restaurant in Tustin. They plan their schedules months in advance for a Stray Cats concert.

The rockabilly trappings are distinctive: studded leather jackets worn over T-shirts or tank tops. The shoes of choice are cowboy boots or creepers--a popular shoe from the 1950s with pointed toes and thick soles. Pompadours are fortified with Dax Wax.

“These guys really get into it; they live it,” Palomino owner Bill Thomas said.

“The music’s strongest appeal right now, besides those like me, are for those under 21,” said Art Fine, 42, a band promoter and music consultant for network television. Fine produced three albums featuring local rockabilly artists in the early 1980s. He said there are hundreds of hard-core rockabilly fans like Quentin Roberts, most of whom live in the San Fernando Valley.

Ronnie Mack, a 34-year-old rockabilly singer, puts the number of hard-core fans at about 500. Mack, host of KCSN-FM’s live broadcast of country, rhythm-and-blues and rockabilly music Tuesday nights at the Palomino, said the number would be even larger if more young people had access to the music. He pointed out that many clubs booking rockabilly bands won’t admit anyone under 21.

Rockabilly, a hybrid of rhythm-and-blues and country music, spawned Elvis Presley and Gene Vincent and the rock ‘n’ roll juggernaut of the 1950s. The music was eclipsed in the early 1960s by the British invasion and rediscovered in the late 1970s, when rockabilly mania swept Europe. The revival gained a foothold in the United States in the early 1980s.

In early 1985, however, this country’s premier rockabilly group, the Stray Cats, disbanded, and the fledgling revival crashed. Quentin Roberts and his friends, many of whom were introduced to rockabilly 4 years ago in high school, said they kept the faith and feel vindicated by a new surge of enthusiasm for the music, which coincides with the Stray Cats’ decision to regroup.

“Rockabilly is the only kind of music left that’s clean,” Roberts said as he leaned against his Chevy. “When it’s live, it sounds as it does on a record. Real people play it with real instruments. There’s nothing phony or fake about it.”

Roberts flashed a smile at his girlfriend, Quincy Whorf, a 19-year-old former model, who waited for him on the lawn. Whorf, also a Woodland Hills resident, works as a counselor at an adolescent drug rehabilitation center. Her contemporary look is 30 years ahead of her rockabilly boyfriend’s.

Asked if she found Roberts’ ‘50s appearance attractive, Whorf was emphatic. “Oh, yeah. It’s that hard-core look, that clean-cut rebel look. . . . I’m just not into it as much as Quentin is. I mean, those ‘50s clothes don’t flatter me.”

Other young women in the Valley agreed. Although the music attracts both sexes, the rockabilly look is almost exclusively male.

At a recent Paladins concert at the Palomino, Dominic (Romeo) Goglia, 21, of Canoga Park said: “A guy can be more self-assured dressed like this because he looks rugged. He can be tough; he can be cool; he can be anything he really wants.”

Goglia, a Pacific Bell operator who wants to be an artist, pointed to the flames that he painted on the back of his leather jacket. “Cool, huh?” he asked. Goglia sports two earrings on one ear and a clip on the other, which, he acknowledges, isn’t part of the ‘50s rockabilly look. “But it is a part of the ‘80s rockabilly look,” he said.

The look also includes tattoos. Tim (The Rebel) Clark, 19, of Hollywood has 15, including a rose on his chest with his mother’s name. Since Clark was wearing a sleeveless shirt, most of the artwork was on display at the Paladins concert.

“I was 16 when I got my first tattoo, a panther up on this shoulder,” Clark said, pointing to it. “Then I got this pin-up girl on this arm. Then I got another over here because the pin-up girl was bigger than the panther. Then I just kept going.”

Clark is a student at Fullerton College, majoring in business administration. Although he is prepared to wear a suit and tie when necessary, he doesn’t believe that he will have to conform completely to the corporate look to get a good job. “Though maybe I’ll cover up my tattoos or something like that,” he said.

Young people like rockabilly for the same reason that their parents did in the 1950s, Mack said. “It’s raw, wild and dangerous.” And, he said, it’s danceable. “It’s so different from modern dancing, in which you stand in one place and jiggle around. A rockabilly dance is exciting and athletic, with these good-looking guys throwing their girls over their shoulders and pulling them through their legs.”

Mack pointed out that the music achieved its young following without the encouragement of the music industry.

“Big record companies and radio stations have tried to deny the music. They never took it seriously,” he said. “They don’t see any market. Even when the Stray Cats hit it big--and they first had to go to Europe to do that--the record companies weren’t about to let anyone else have a shot at it.”

Robert Merlis, vice president for publicity for Warner Brothers Records, has a poster of rockabilly singer Ray Campi on his office wall. Although he counts himself as a fan of the music, he admitted that the record industry doesn’t know what to make of rockabilly.

“The uninitiated think it’s part of country music, while those in country music recognize it as rock ‘n’ roll and won’t touch it.” Merlis said he believes that rockabilly is closest to “real” rock ‘n’ roll, but suggested that it may have to be shoehorned into the country category to gain access to larger markets.

He said the music also needs the right combination of band, song and setting to make it ignite on a national scale. “I don’t know what that combination is, but it’s still possible that the Bob Marley of rockabilly will come to the forefront,” Merlis said. Marley spearheaded the reggae movement in this country from the mid-1970s until his death from cancer in 1981.

Ronny Weiser, 42, of Van Nuys was a lightning rod for the first major revival of rockabilly in the late 1970s. His rockabilly fan club begat Rollin’ Rock Magazine, which began Rollin’ Rock Records, a minor label that re-released obscure rockabilly records and recorded local performers from the ‘50s.

Weiser said he stopped recording about 4 years ago, when the effort became too expensive and interest in rockabilly seemed to wane. This new surge of enthusiasm could mean that young people are disenchanted with contemporary music, Weiser said.

“You turn on the radio, and there’s nothing but a drum machine beat to electronic disco music,” Weiser said. “There’s only so much you can take before you say: ‘What else is there?’ ”

Not only new groups, but a few rockabilly originals from the 1950s are back at the Palomino and other clubs. One of them, Campi, 54, of Glendale, had retired as a performer until Weiser rediscovered him in the mid-1970s, re-recorded his music and sent him on tours throughout Europe.

By day, Campi still works as an English teacher at Maclay Junior High School in Pacoima. But at night, he puts on his boots ($65 Mexican Specials), ties a scarf around his neck and literally mounts his upright bass, riding it like a horse as he slaps the strings and sings the classics.

Campi believes that young people are embracing rockabilly music as an act of independence.

“They’re turning their noses up at the media, the big record companies, the pop and heavy metal idols,” he said. “The kids don’t give a damn about what’s played on the radio. They are here to hear real music.”

In its latest incarnation, rockabilly embraces a few new variations on the ‘50s sound, most notably, psychobilly.

Tony Redhorse, 22, leader of the psychobilly band the Saddle Sores, said the sound involves heavy chords, minor keys and an African-style drum beat. “But, essentially, it’s rockabilly that died and came back from the grave,” he said.

Redhorse shaves his head except for the long strands in front that he combs back as a pompadour. He rolls up his jeans as far as he can and wears dramatic makeup. “And instead of car hops and things like that, our songs will be about zombies and outer space creatures,” he said.

Many of the young rockabilly and psychobilly enthusiasts said they were introduced to the music and the ‘50s subculture by their fathers.

John (Johnny Rev) Benson, 21, of Canoga Park, one of the hard-core rockabilly fans at the Paladins concert at the Palomino, said his father knew Gene Thomas, bass player for Bill Haley and the Comets. “When I was 5 years old, my father had Thomas bring over an album and sign it for me,” Benson said. “I still have it and play it. I’ve liked rockabilly ever since--not exclusively--but it’s what I like the most.”

Russell Scott, a 21-year-old band leader from Van Nuys, said his father took him and his sister, Melony, to a rockabilly concert at the La Mirada Civic Auditorium for his 15th birthday. “I always liked the music because my father used to play his old records for me. But, at that concert, for the first time I realized there were other kids my age who liked rockabilly.”

Dominic Goglia has a 1954 photograph of his father in a pompadour, in an Elvis pose and holding a guitar. He said his father won an Elvis lip-sync contest in high school. “He loves the music; I mean he loves the music,” Goglia said.

Greg Roberts, 15, however, picked up on rockabilly not from his father, but from his older brother, Quentin.

Although Greg admitted that he’s a standout at El Camino High School in his leather jacket and pompadour, he said he’s not a loner. “I have a lot of friends. They don’t exclude me because of the way I look. Besides, a lot of them are weird in their own ways.”

Greg and Quentin’s father, 49, also named Quentin, said he was glad that his sons took to rockabilly rather than heavy metal or punk rock, although he laughs at times when he watches his sons. He acknowledged that--except for Greg’s earring--”the boys really do look like the students I graduated with in 1957.”

He said both have jobs, and all the money they spend on leather jackets, boots and, in Quentin’s case, those 1950s automobiles, comes out of their own pockets. “I don’t contribute a dime,” he said.

As for that large swimming pool shaped like a bass guitar at the back of the house, he was quick to point out: “That was here when we bought the house. Quentin and Greg didn’t have anything to do with it. Honest.”