...and we each had our own ‘65 Mustang*

 

* All four of us each owned a ‘65 Knightmobile as we fondly referred to them. Each, a different color. Mine was army green (I later bought a white one),  Rick’s was midnight blue, Paul’s, baby blue and Cory’s heaven knows what color it was before he and Paul got drunk one day and painted it with gray house primer using brushes and rollers. Not an inch was spared (except for a few places on the windows)-what a mess that turned out to be! Then I came along a few days to complete the job with our stencil and painted our logo on each door as well as the back of the car with the words “Friday” and “Knights” flanking the gas cap. 

 

GOOD OL’ QUANAH!

 

Although I was a novice musician at best, Rick was always unassuming,non-judgemental and very patient with me. He soon became the big brother that I never had. He had actually gone out with girls too, so he also became my muse/coach in that department, I felt I had struck gold when we met! Anyway, he took me under his wing and tolerated my quirky sense of humor and lack of musical abilities. He even treated me as an equal as he worked out melodies to my lyric book that I gave him free reign to do with what he pleased. Meanwhile I was trying to find my way around my new instrument, the tambourine. In addition to being the Bernie Taupin of the pair, I also advised some melody input at times.

 

 I’ll always remember our first very song, Can’t Get You Off Of My Mind which had a special place in my heart because I had written the lyrics for Janis, my first real crush and my first date. We were never romantic, but we’ve remained life-long friends ever since, still to this day. Long before I met Rick she and I used to talk on the phone for hours and one night we started making plans to start a band of our own. She played me a song on her guitar that whe had written, called Travelin’ On which I took home the sheet music to and started to learn the chords on my guitar, I was very impressed with her little number. We decided we would form a duet called The Wild Psychotic Shazam Band, but that never came to pass.

 

Anyway, Rick and I were inseparable buddies now and we worked hard to form some original songs. Music never came easy to me, as Ringo would say “It don’t come easy”, and I hated paying my dues just to sing the blues, which didn’t help either. I just wanted a free ride to the big time without much blood, sweat and tears. Having A.D.D. didn’t only add to these challenges  as it had made concentrating and learning difficult for me as it still does to this day. So my job was to try to learn bass and to come up with ideas while Rick got serious about creating new chord combinations. Somewhere along the lines, I felt it was time to add a couple more members to our duo, and become more Beatle-esque. After all, how else were we going to get bigger than The Beatles, when we only had half as many members? Being at that level was the most important thing to us, even more so than playing on The San Francisco Giants, which was a close second choice. When we talked about stardom Rick wanted to be known by his birth name Quanah instead of just plain Rick. Quanah, so Quanah, it was from then on.

 

GATHERING OUR ARSENAL

 

Trying to think of potential bandmates, I first asked the first real friend I ever made once we moved to Millbrae from San Bruno in 1966, Dave Aulwurm. He played trumpet in the Capuchino band, and he was really smart, so smart that he was about to graduate a year early, and wanted nothing to do with being in a band with two would-be rockers. So it was back to the drawing board. Next, I turned to my good friend, Cory Fernandez, who was the funniest/funnest guy I ever knew. These would be perfect qualities to have for what I had in mind!. He could tell a story that could only be matched by my Uncle Stan, and that’s really saying something!. Some people knew how to talk, well Cory could have taught a full course on the subject, complete with off the cuff jokes, voices and persuasive tips. We had lots in common, baseball, chess and gambling, to name just a few. He was also the drummer in our high school band. We were both on the Mustang Swim team together as well, although our “swimming laps'' often consisted of us sneaking back into the locker room so we could play blackjack together. To many, I was known at “Cap” as the card dealer/hustler who was always ready to whip out his red deck of “Bee” cards and beginning shuffling, cutting and dealing with just one hand to anyone who I could talk into sitting down for long enough to win their lunch money, which I usually did as I was the house so I had the .05% edge.