Ventures’ Capital Comes From Japan
East is East and West is West, and it was the Ventures’ good fortune to discover more than 30 years ago that the twang is where they meet.
In 1965 the Ventures touched down for their first headlining tour of Japan; as Don Wilson and Mel Taylor tell it, the greeting they received at the airport was little short of Beatlemaniacal.
Thus began a long-running love affair between Japanese fans and the bestselling instrumental rock band ever.
Back in the West, meanwhile, actual Beatlemania had broken out, and it meant an almost instant wipeout for the surf-oriented, guitar-driven instrumental rockers who had scored hits through the early ‘60s. The Ventures, better established and stylistically more flexible than the rest, were able to keep up a steady streak of Top 40 albums until late in 1966. But without Japan’s continuing embrace, Wilson and Taylor say, the Ventures never would have made it as far as they have: all the way into their 37th year, with a lineup not greatly changed from what it was during the band’s peak selling period.
Rhythm guitarist Wilson and bassist Bob Bogle, who started playing together in Tacoma, Wash., in 1959, have never stopped being Ventures. Taylor has been in the band continuously since 1962, when he left his niche as a Los Angeles session drummer (Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s “Monster Mash” is his best-known credit) to take over from original member Howie Johnson.
Nokie Edwards (see related story, F2) played most of the lead guitar lines that helped key the Ventures’ chart success; he served two hitches with the band, from 1960-68, and 1972-85. That gives Gerry McGee, who replaced Edwards both times, about 15 years’ tenure as the Ventures’ junior partner. McGee, another former ‘60s session man, played on early albums by the Monkees.
Orange County is a cradle of instrumental surf rock, but it hasn’t had a live shot of the Ventures’ clean, propulsive sound since the 1980s. Now local fans can make it a double: Edwards plays tonight at the Crazy Horse Steak House, backed by local surf-rockers the Torquays, and the Ventures play Thursday at the Coach House (also Friday at the House of Blues in West Hollywood, with the Surfaris opening). The Ventures and Edwards will be together Friday at noon for a ceremony in Hollywood: their handprints and a plaque will be planted in concrete along the “Rock Walk” outside the Guitar Center, 7425 Sunset Blvd. The Chantays, the Surfaris and Jan & Dean will be similarly honored.
The Ventures say they hit it big in Japan mainly because they were the first major rock band playing songs the Japanese could instantly understand.
“There was no language barrier, and it was high-energy music, and it took off from there,” Taylor said over the phone last week from his home in Reseda.
“We started a guitar boom,” recalled Wilson, who was on a conference line from Sherman Oaks (following Bogle, he is about to relocate back to Washington state). “Guitars started selling like crazy. [The Japanese] had never seen a group that just played instruments.”
The Ventures wrote a good deal of original material, but from the beginning their method also called for spotting catchy numbers from other sources and adapting them to their own ends. Hence, in 1960, a tune called “Walk--Don’t Run” was culled from a Chet Atkins record and turned into a career-launching hit that remains the Ventures’ signature song. When the British band the Tornadoes scored an instrumental hit in “Telstar” (1962), the Ventures remade it as the title track of their biggest-selling album. When surf music erupted from Southern California starting in 1961, the Ventures had no qualms about appropriating such signature surf instrumentals as “Penetration” by the Pyramids, “Pipeline” by the Chantays, and “Wipe Out” by the Surfaris.
“We would look at the charts--never the Top 100, but look at the ‘Bubbling Under’ [section], and try to choose the ones we thought would be strong,” Taylor said. “Most of the time, we were right.”
“I’ve always respected the Ventures and what they play,” said Bob Spickard of the Chantays, the Orange County surf band that wrote “Pipeline” and scored a hit single with it in 1963. Having one’s song Venture-ized “has its good points and its bad points,” Spickard said. “My first reaction was, ‘It’s a compliment.’ It’s fine, because financially we did fairly well” with writers’ royalties generated by the Ventures’ album sales. “Unfortunately, a lot of people think the Ventures had the national hit [single], which they did not. I feel a little odd when people think they did the original.”
Noting some similar confusion about “Wipe Out,” Jim Pash of the Surfaris wishes the Ventures would mention the song’s authorship when they play it live.
“It’s a sin of omission, actually,” he said. “They just do ‘em. When we do a Ventures medley, we say, ‘We’re now going to do songs by the Ventures.’ I’ve always had a thing about that.” (The Surfaris, with original members Pash and Jim Fuller, plus seminal surf guitarist Paul Johnson, play Saturday at 8:30 p.m. at the Tiki Bar in Costa Mesa).
The Ventures have, in fact, been on both ends of the borrowing process: in 1962, an Orange County teen band called the Lively Ones adapted Nokie Edwards’ composition, “Spudnik,” renamed it “Surf Rider,” and had a hit that was revived recently on the “Pulp Fiction” soundtrack.
“There was never any jealousy stuff” coming from the Ventures’ camp because of the borrowed number, said Ed Chiaverini, one of the Lively Ones’ guitarists.
After a last commercial hurrah in the United States, a 1969 hit with the “Hawaii Five-O” theme, the Ventures focused their recording and touring efforts on Japan, where they play 80 to 100 shows a year. The old recording formula still applies, only now the Ventures often rework hits from the Japanese charts.
Tending to their Japanese audience has left little time or opportunity for cultivating new fans or regaining old ones in the United States, Wilson and Taylor say. They also have been frustrated by a dearth of new instrumental rock hits to Venture-ize.
“We looked around for stuff like that, and there’s nothing,” Taylor sighed.
The Ventures haven’t abandoned their hopes of attracting a new U.S. audience. Three of their most successful early ‘60s albums were recently reissued--”The Ventures Play Telstar” and “The Ventures in Space” on a single CD, and an expanded, 30-song version of “Surfing” that includes previously unreleased live performances and studio recordings.
Last month, the current Ventures finished work on an album of 17 mostly vintage songs that have not appeared on any previous Ventures releases. It will come out soon in Japan, but Wilson and Taylor hope it will subsequently become the Ventures’ first new U.S. release of the ‘90s. The selections show the band’s trademark diversity: renditions of movie themes (“Exodus,” “James Bond Theme”), surf oldies (“Teen Beat,” “Baha”) and rocked-up versions of classical themes (“William Tell Overture,” and a rendition of Beethoven’s Fifth that they’ve dubbed “Beethoven Five-O”).
A resurgence in the U.S. might improve the band’s chances of realizing another unfulfilled goal: “We don’t know why we’re not in the [Rock and Roll] Hall of Fame,” Wilson said. A lack of hit singles and original compositions that became standards may be the chief barriers; the Ventures’ 17 Top 40 albums yielded just six Top 40 singles.
At least there is that fallback position across the Pacific, where the Ventures, now in their late 50s and early 60s, have a large following and job security.
A couple of years ago, Wilson said, the Ventures were in negotiations with their Japanese concert promoters. “They wanted us to sign a 10-year contract. At 59 years old, I was thinking, ‘Wait a minute.’ So we just signed for three years.”
Still, Wilson sees no imminent end to the Ventures’ long ride. “We’re so used to this lifestyle. We’re not afraid to retire, but what would I do?”
* The Ventures and the Tiki Tones play Thursday at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. 8 p.m. $16.50-$18.50. (714) 496-8930.
