The story behind Steppenwolf's 'Magic Carpet Ride' (WSJ)

My fav Steppenwolf record. Really shows Jerry as a fine R&B drummer (on a rock track no less) with excellent bd/snare/hh work. Love both the single and album versions.

Sooooooo........ thumping the strings with a fist hard enough to jam them down to touch the pickups for the rhythmic pounding sound overdubs on the intro... I'm going right into the studio tonight and try that. I always figured it was some sort of overdub with amp tremelo turned on. The fist thing sounds way more cool and organic. I

 

I'd never heard the single mix of "Magic Carpet Ride" until the ABC/Dunhill Singles Collection came out last year. Wow....

 

One of the harder rocking psychedelic tunes from the late 60's that perfectly captured the spirit and imagination of the times (just as "Born To Be Wild" did prior to that). I wasn't aware of the lead vocal variances, only the differences in length, assuming the single was simply a pruned down version since I never acquired the original album. How interesting.

As for the interview, it's good to know that instead of drugs and sex (as one might otherwise expect), it really was about rock n roll - in blissful stereophonic sound!

 

Completely color blind. Huh, thats crazy. Never knew that.

 

I bought a book about the greatest drummers of the 1960s, and was pleasantly surprised that there was a full chapter on Jerry Edmonton. He really was inventive wasn't he? And a creative arranger on a lot of Steppenwolf songs, even if he didn't show on the credits as such. John Kay said that lots of times when the band was searching for a "special something" to improve a song, it was Jerry who came up with an idea. Sadly, he was killed in a car accident in 1993.

 

Gabriel Mekler, who got Steppenwolf the gig that got them signed to Dunhill, and who made significant contributions to a lot of Dunhill productions, also died in a vehicular accident, in his case a motorcycle accident.

 

I always felt Rushton Moreve never got enough credit for his fantastic bass playing over the years. He never seems to make bass player polls. To me he was the heart and soul of magic carpet ride. He wasn't mentioned a whole lot in that article and they couldn't even find a picture of Micheal or Rushton. Later band members pictured that didn't have a thing to do with that particular song. Just a shame that he was fired after the second album. To me that was the end of the trademark Steppenwolf sound. Nick st. Nickolas was no Rushton in the bass department.

 

Me either. Had NO idea about that version. All the subsequent releases just copied the edit with the album vocal. Blew me away!

 

I'm trying to remember if Ruston was fired or if he quit. There was an incident of him being caught shoplifting a turkey from a grocery store, and then he suddenly disappeared, afraid that California was about to have an apocalyptic earthquake. For years he never picked up his royalty payments for co-writing MCR; they were held in a trust account for him. The band got Nick because they needed a replacement fast and had worked with him before in Sparrow, so he was at least familiar to them. But yeah, he wasn't a great player. John Kay says that on "Steppenwolf Live", you can hear that Nick didn't properly tune. George Biondo was a lot better (and could sing like Rod Stewart too).

 

I always heard he was fired for being absent too often. Wasn't Nicholas fired in turn only a couple of years later?

Whaaa? MORE DETAILS PLEASE.

 

I dug out John Kay's book. I was wrong about the stolen meat: it was steaks, not turkey. There were a couple of absences, for which John Kay fired him. Kay regrets being too hot-headed about it and wished they'd tried talking it out, because in losing Rushton they lost a key part of their sound. In hiring Nick, the band had been told that his bass playing had greatly improved during the months he was in T.I.M.E., but this turned out not to be the case. (At least they soon got Larry Byrom and then George Biondo from T.I.M.E. as well, which was a very good thing.) Nick was fired after pissing off John Kay once too often: turning up onstage at a Fillmore East show wearing only a sequinned jockstrap and bunny ears – and playing out-of-tune.

 

I met both John and Nick at an after-concert Steppenwolf party sometime in 69 or so. I think I mentioned it in a post here a few years back. John eventually disappeared but Nick and I stood there talking for quite a long time. He was soft-spoken, very articulate and friendly as we talked about various LA bands. He was wearing basically the same kaftan thing he wore on the Smothers Brothers taping of "Carpet". Even I would sometimes wear Sat Purush type clothes (well, a year earlier) but nothing as extreme as what Nick was wearing. Nonetheless, he was a nice guy even though he looked a little out of place to the general biker/leather image the band had.

 

And notice that Goldy's organ comes in late and he himself said that it was because he was stoned but they never fixed it, just left it like that!

 

Bill Cooper is the best engineer I've ever seen, bar none anywhere, but the article doesn't mention, it was actually Richie Podolor sitting in the control room producing that with Bill..

Anyway I wrote tonight because

STEPPENWOLF nominated for R&R Hall of fame. Can Three Dog be far behind ? Can Danny & Chuck stand onstage for 5 minutes to accept the honor...

So who shows up for a Steppenwolf induction

Edmonton, Kent Henry dead

Bobby Cochran, Goldie, John, Monarch, Biondo, who else ?

 

Larry Byrom, Nick St. Nicholas

 

The Edmonton brothers are from my hometown, and nobody else in the world is from there. So it used to be heartening as a kid to hear those songs on the radio and realise that it was possible to escape.

It's a cool story, thanks for the link. I love reading about moments of greatness just kind of falling together in the moment.

 

I knew a girl in 10th grade with that condition. I'd imagine it's rarer than complete blindness.

 

Apparently, only the first verse is a different take.

 

I was born in 1964 and one of my earliest musical memories. Was my dad playing The Pusher on his stereo. Thanks for this history lesson.Love the Wolf!