Ronnie, second from left, and the Defenders I don't know anyone who thinks that they had a normal childhood,
but I still think that mine was weirder than most. Of course, at the time, I thought it was perfectly normal to have
a dad who made his living playing disco and Top 40 songs in a
cover band. Until the mid-'80s, my father played in, managed,
and basically babysat a rotating group of misfits that he called
Whitebridge. They were named for the covered bridge in Valley
Forge Park, not far from our home in Phoenixville, where I lived
shortly after I was born in 1970. My father's music career started long before me. While going to
Temple University in the early '60s, he played guitar in a band
called Ronnie and the Defenders. (My dad's name is Ron and they
all played Fender guitars). They released a single called "Do
the Dog" on a local label, and pre-Bluenote Harold Melvin and
Eddie Custis (who went on to join Chairmen of the Board) were
among the famous Fenders. Throughout the '60s, they were what
was known as the "pick-up" band, for touring artists like Chuck
Berry, The Supremes, and The Four Tops, who at the time didn't
travel with their own backing bands. From '63-'72, my father also
managed Lee Andrews and the Hearts, which is how he met schoolmate
Larry Magid, their previous manager, who ended up booking the
Defenders at various shows too. As if that weren't enough, my
dad also produced records by groups like The Buckinghams, wrote
music for a Jerry Blavat program that briefly aired on Channel
10, and worked as a production assistant for The Mike Douglas Show. Whitebridge started in 1974, right before my sister Emily was
born. According to my dad, he would pick what songs the band should
learn by "going to clubs and seeing what people liked," following
the Billboard charts, and constantly buying 45s. Mainly, he wanted to play
"whatever made people dance." When the band came over to practice,
I'd sit on the green shag carpeting of the den in a Holly Hobby
nightgown, playing the cowbell along with the band while they
worked out a Fleetwood Mac, Hall and Oates, or Steely Dan record.
The band people never talked to me like I was some stupid little
kid; they treated me like I was a real person and I thought of
them as slightly bigger kids. My dad's Hammond organ player friend
Joey Gennetti would sit and read Batman comics with me on the
couch. Walter the drummer talked nonstop and used to call me "Sara
Smile." And there was Bugsy, who looked and sang like Stevie Nicks.
The only one who scared me was Bugsy's boyfriend, Dal, the guitarist.
He was supposed to be the good-looking one, but all he would do
was just sit and stare and stare and never say a word. The one
time I remember him interacting with me at all was when he turned
me upside down and accidentally hit my head on the floor. Offstage,
Dal and Bugsy were having a real-life Stevie Nicks and Lindsay
Buckingham drama, and according to my mom, Dal dragged Bugsy by
the hair at one of the hotels where Whitebridge was playing. When Dad wasn't playing in Whitebridge, he worked during the day
doing advertising layout for an electronics outlet called Hi Fi
House. Other times, he'd eat Breyer's Vanilla Fudge ice cream
straight from the carton or disappear into the massive garden
that he cultivated in the back yard. If it wasn't for my mother,
we'd probably only eat ice cream and fresh tomatoes. Even though
my dad was the type of person who could start a conversation with
anyone anywhere, at home my mom did all the talking and kept the
house in order. When my dad was playing his guitar or bass, you
just couldn't talk to him, even when he seemed to be looking right
at you. "Dad? Dad! Are you listening?" "Uh huh." These conversations
even happened when he wasn't playing an instrument. My father
just sort of had the talent for pretending he was somewhere else
at all times - and I always wanted to know where that place was.
When Whitebridge became a full-time job in 1976, my father was
around less and less. And when he was around, my mother did all
the yelling. The only time I've ever heard my father yell back
was at Walter the drummer and usually it had something to do with
money. Most of the time, he's the type of person to diffuse a
situation by asking, "What's the problem here," as if problems
are the most ridiculous things. In 1978 my parents split up and
my father went to go live with Laura, the woman who would later
become my stepmother, and her daughter Paige, who was just two
months older than me. There's something about watching your parents
fall out of love that makes you grow up very fast. When I'd visit my dad on the weekends between 1978 and 1980, it
was always in a nightclub, like Winston's, or a hotel, like the
Holiday Inn in Fort Washington. Paige was my partner in crime.
We'd ride the elevators, talk to strangers, peek in the Men's
Room, and deplete the front desk of their mint supply. We trashed
hotel rooms just like any rock star. (Actually, the worst that
we did was bounce on the beds and declare that we were forming
our own band called The Bouncing Pigs, while oinking and yelling
Blondie songs at the top of our lungs.) Bedtime was nonexistent
and Saturday Night Live and SCTV were our babysitters - with Laura checking on us between sets.
Emily learned to fall asleep anywhere: on the floor of the van,
in booths in restaurants, and even inside speaker cabinets. There was a new batch of Whitebridge members to consider, a lot
of whom are a blur of glitter and Spandex and bell-bottoms to
me now. There was busty singer Phyllis who was hired for her,
um, talents, who worked in tandem with Donna Summer sound-alike
Sharon, who was followed by Tina Turner twin Suzette, who was
partners with Tammy the would-be Whitney Houston. According to
my dad, Sharon walked out on New Year's Eve 1979, complaining
she "couldn't hear her 'fucking' self on the monitors." She said
that she was going home to New Jersey even though they were "in
a cow pasture in the middle of Podunk, West Virginia, about six
or seven hours away." Because the contract called for six people
onstage, Laura put on one of Phyllis' evening gowns and continued
the midnight set. To make things worse, they had to learn Kool
and the Gang's "Celebration" (the only song from Whitebridge's
repertoire that my father admits to hating) and play it for the
rest of his career. Although my dad was straight-edge, drug use was rampant. Paige
and I learned that pot was the funny-smelling stuff that made
the bandmembers giggly, silly, and eat a lot, and coke was the
stuff that made them yell a lot (mostly about money) and talk
very fast. My father stopped playing in Whitebridge in 1982 and started managing
them, and other bands, like an all-girl band called Rapture (complete
with lips for a logo) who covered David Bowie's "Rebel Rebel,"
Joan Jett and The Go-Gos. (Paige recently ran into Irene, the
bass player from Rapture with the Joan Jett haircut. At age 43
and no longer built like Joan Jett, she's still trying to make
it as an original rocker.) The teen years were cruel to me and kind to Paige. I got braces
and she got taller. In the summer of '83, when Paige and I were
going into eighth grade, Whitebridge got a house in Wildwood while
they played stuff like The Police, Men at Work, Michael Jackson
and Tina Turner Tuesday through Saturday at the Hurricane East.
My dad hoped that living together for a summer would give them
the opportunity to practice and maybe write some originals, but
they spent more time partying. For the first time, it wasn't okay for me to hang out with the
band but they welcomed Paige, as if our two-month age difference
was more like years. Dad says that they just knew her better.
We were both allowed to wear makeup to the clubs at that point,
but on me, it looked painted on while it made her look like a
bonafide grown-up. Meanwhile, I was only a grown-up when it came
time to take care of Emily. For me, the metaphor of that summer
was being stuck in the House of Mirrors on the boardwalk. Emily
slipped through the cracks, Paige adeptly navigated her way out,
and all I had was my awkward reflection to bump into while everyone
else watched and laughed, forgetting how hard it was to be on
the inside. My Whitebridge fandom pretty much ended after that summer and
when I got to high school I was embarrassed to tell my classic
rock friends about my disco dad. It was just as well because soon after that, in 1985, he got out
of the music business when Whitebridge demanded that they have
the opportunity to (mis)manage themselves. Six months later, Whitebridge
broke up. Cover bands gave way to DJs, and my father was forced
to declare bankruptcy. But my dad's the type of person who just
has to be entertaining all the time. If we were living in Tin
Pan Alley days, I could picture him in a hat and cane on stage
telling jokes. In 1986, my dad started working as a mobile DJ, which proved to
be less stressful because all he had to manage were his records.
After helping him find people's obscure requests at my various
record store jobs and watching my dad at parties making people
dance who don't want to, playing games with kids, making sure
everyone hears their special song, allowing people to be legends
in their own minds with karaoke, I've grown to admire him. Seemingly
ageless and energetic, he's like Dick Clark with a beard. I probably
wouldn't listen to half the hot hits in his collection, but lately
I'd still rather have a conversation with my dad about music than
a jaded indie-rock arm folder. On Memorial Day we were in New Hope riding the mule barge, and
my dad started talking to the tour guide/entertainer about guitars.
When he told him that he used to play in some cover band long
ago, the mule barge captain recognized him and said that he was
a regular at the Holiday Inn in Fort Washington. "You guys were
great," he said. "You should play again." And my dad just smiled.
- Sara Sherr
Defending Dad