By 1969, Boston's rock and roll scene was sinking deeper into the great abyss. The "Boston Sound" (commonly called the Bosstown Sound), an MGM Records promotion, had failed miserably. Members of the rising J. Geils Band were not happy with the results of their first recording sessions, and no record-release date was anywhere in sight. Rock clubs and larger music halls (or rock ballrooms, as they were sometimes called) were closing. The celebrated Club 47 in Harvard Square was gone and a great folkie exodus was underway. Even the mighty Boston Tea Party was drifting toward its final days.

Looking back, we know now that rock was renewing itself, in the usual way, by revisiting its origins garage-rock, blues, and, later on, folk and country. But mostly blues. The eternal cover bands were joined by blues-rock outfits and funk groups. The so-called "boogie bands" came to dominate the region's rock clubs.¹

Meanwhile, in or around the summer of 1970, we find a Biddeford, Maine, rock ensemble called Catfish Black.² Band members were Harvard students, and they returned there in the fall, filling a few trial musical engagements. Around that time, Jimmy Mahoney left the group; and drummer Andy Paley³ replaced him as lead vocalist. Suzie Adams soon became the band's manager.⁴ Apparently it was about the same time that the group recorded a demo tape at the MIT student union.

Sometime after that, two other members, Ernie Brooks and Jerry Harrison, left the band. The next news of these two that we caught was really not much later when they were members of the fabled Modern Lovers.

In 1971, Richard Robinson got Catfish Black some bookings at Max's Kansas City in New York. After reaching New York, members of Catfish Black caught wind of another group with a similar name; so they collectively rechristened themselves the Sidewinders, taking that name from the Roger McGuinn song, "Chestnut Mare." Not much later, the group was signed to RCA Records.

A week before recording started, producer-to-be Richard Robinson was replaced by future Patti Smith guitarist, Lenny Kaye.⁵ It is said that David Bowie stopped by the sessions. The album jacket names these members of the Sidewinders: Leigh Lisowski,⁶ Andy Paley, Mike Reed, Eric Rosenfeld,⁷ Henry Stern.

"Bad Dreams," the opening track, tells much of the story. The relentless rhythm section shows that it's perfectly capable of kicking up some serious dust. And Eric Rosenfeld, as the record progresses, demonstrated why he became one of the most respected Boston-area rock guitarists of the '70s. Though the Sidewinders' vocal and instrumental sound was slicked up in the recording studio, an undercurrent of '60s-style garage punk is quite apparent, particularly on numbers such as "Superhit" and "Told You So." The motto on the album jacket reads, "I want to bite your hand."

Far from a commercial success, nonetheless The Sidewinders (LP, RCA, 1972) seems to have been a critics' record, achieving favorable reviews in Circus, Creem, Rolling Stone, and Variety.⁸ It was a Billboard Pick of the Week. Radio play, though, was disappointing; and sales were not strong. We see no reason to believe the Sidewinders ever reached its potential audience.

Not long after the album's release, Mike Reed and Henry Stern left the Sidewinders. Bryan Chase and Larry Luddecke joined up, though Luddecke was with the band only briefly after its return to playing live shows around Christmas 1972.

The Sidewinders history, which seems sketchy at best, becomes quite murky at this point. Band members auditioned a host of guitarists. We are told that the Sidewinders were informed that Billy Squier was their new guitarist,⁹ though no mention is made of who did the telling.

Suzie Adams planned to step down as the group's manager, and apparently musical differences hastened Eric Rosenfeld's departure. The Sidewinders gave an impressive showcase performance at Max's Kansas City for prospective managers, but it might have been too late. After that the band started slowly coming apart.¹⁰

The Sidewinders broke up. End of story. Right? Not hardly. Young punk rockers in suburban garages and in the lofts and basements of Boston heard these guys and liked and understood the music. This wasn't another boogie band cranking out da blooze in the region's bars. This was something different. This was stuff younger musicians and fans could call their own. The band was gone, but its music was still doing its work.

James Isaacs became a strong spokesman for Boston's music community, first in "Local Color," his Real Paper column, and later in the Boston Phoenix feature, "Cellars by Starlight."¹¹

In 1976, Isaacs wrote that

During the past year or so ... a new rock 'n' roll milieu has begun to spring up in Boston and its non-posh suburbs. The musicians' roots are in the hard rock-pop of the mid-'60s but, like two splendid local bands from the earlier part of this decade, the Modern Lovers and the Sidewinders, they inform their work with a sense of '70s flash and humor.¹²

Isaacs was right to connect Boston's mid-'70s punk rockers with the earlier Sidewinders. We would go a step further and say that the band exerted a direct and important influence on the development of a new Boston rock underground.

"Streetwalker," recorded by a late lineup that included Billy Squier, was released on the various-artists compilation, The Boston Incest Album (LP, Sounds Interesting, n.d. [1980]). That track, like the collection in general, was controversial. In the Boston Globe, Marc D. Allan said that "The Sidewinders' 'Street Walker' lacks the chops that much of their 1973 RCA album had."¹³ Yet a Boston Rock notice, written by Carrie B. Cooper and Bonnie Kaleta, said that it came "closer to cooking up the Sidewinders' vicious sound than their LP ever id."¹⁴

-- Alan Lewis, November 10, 2001

Slightly revised on December 29, 2001

1. In an often quoted 1976/1977 Bomp magazine article, Bruce Dickinson, writing about the prevalence of blues/funk music, said, "It's what the people wanted and they packed Boston's many clubs."

2. The most comprehensive article about the Sidewinders that our research turned up is posted at the Boston Rock and Roll Museum site (accessed 10/6/2001). To say that it's relatively extensive, though, is not to say that I'm really enthusiastic about it. The Museum's profile of the Sidewinders seems pretty vague and a little chaotic. It carries no byline, though I would guess it was written by a band member or someone quite close to the group. It reads like it was produced by a person who is so familiar with the subject matter that he or she just can't see that many readers may need more details or sharper clarity. Then, too, Ernie Brooks and Billy Squier are presented in an unfavorable light. (I don't pretend to know whether they did anything to deserve such treatment.) So all told, it's hard to know what to make of the Museum's piece. Nonetheless, it contains information that I haven't seen elsewhere. I've used it as a source, but I've tried to do so cautiously.

3. Many of our visitors will remember Andy Paley as a member of the Paley Brothers and, later, the Nervous Eaters.

4. Billie Best became the manager of Orchestra Luna evidently in 1977. It is all too clear from interviews she gave to Boston-area journalists that having a woman for a manager was something rock bands just didn't do in those days. So it certainly caught my attention that Suzie Adams managed Catfish Black more than half a decade earlier.

5. The Rock and Roll Museum's profile of the Sidewinders seems to imply that the change of producers from Richard Robinson (who was off to produce Lou Reed) to Lenny Kaye represented a problem for the band. It also says that Sidewinder Eric Rosenfeld didn't necessarily trust Kaye. Meaning no disrespect for Robinson, though, it seems to me entirely possible the Sidewinders traded up, at least thinking long term. Kaye is a talented fellow; and if he did nothing else, his contribution to punk rock would have been huge on account of his work compiling Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era 1965-1968 (2 LPs, Elektra, 1972).

Incidentally, there should be no question about where 1970s punk got its name. Punk rock was a phrase used to describe earlier styles going back at least to the mid-1960s. We have at least one 1965 example in our archives from Hit Parader, as I recall, and, oddly enough, applied to the Knickerbockers. New England's own band, the Barbarians, is a much more apt example.

6. While the LP jacket gives this player's name as Leigh Lisowski, the Rock and Roll Museum's profile calls him Leigh Razowski. We have no explanation for the discrepancy.

7. In later years, Eric Rosenfeld was known professionally as Eric Rose.

8. This list of favorable reviews comes from the Rock and Roll Museum profile (see note 2). I can't help noticing the omission of the Boston Globe, the Boston/Cambridge alternative weeklies, and Crawdaddy.

9. Billy Squier, as a solo artist, had a number of hits and may be best remembered for "The Stroke."

10. The Rock and Roll Museum's profile attributes the breakup to Billy Squier's "alleged innate ability to dismantle."

11. James Isaacs also contributed useful pieces to Rolling Stone, at a time when that meant a heck of a lot more than it does today. It is notable and well worth repeating that he founded the Real Paper's "Local Color" column and the "Cellars by Starlight" column in the Boston Phoenix.

Maxanne Sartori, a heavy-metal enthusiast who signed on as a WBCN-FM disk jockey in 1970, was another important champion of local original music.

12. Boston Phoenix, 3/23/1976.

13. Boston Globe, 12/4/1980.

14. Boston Rock, 12/1/1980, Issue 7.

Edgar Willow's notes that accompany The Boston Incest Album say, "Their previously unreleased 'Streetwalker' ... shows the power and flash of that seminal outfit. It cuts to hell anything from the group's sole album on RCA."

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