“Please” taken from the LP ‘Zakary Thaks, J-Beck Story 2’ | (Eva Records EVA 12035) 1984
NFA: So the Michael records have the Zakary Thaks playing backup.
Chris: I think so, on most of ’em, then later on he went out of town with us every weekend for about a year, so actually he was the sixth member of the group.
Carl: The Thaks hired Mike to kinda keep ’em out of trouble on trips and Mike would end up in more trouble than any of the group . . . (laughter)
Mike: That group was impossible, they’d steal flags from motel walls, one time they stole this huge Mexican flag from a motel and the manager kept jumpin’ on me about it sayin’ the band had been seen stealing it and I didn’t know nothin’ about it, the band all swore they didn’t have it but as soon as we got in the car everybody starts laughin and Lopez pulls it out of his britches. (laughter)
Carl: That was at a gig for the Governor’s daughter’s comin’ out party, boy, these guys tore up more motels. I put ’em on the Paul Revere and Raiders show in San Antone and their road manager, Skippy, was always moanin’ to me about what the band had done, so in San Antone they stripped him and pushed him out of the motel room in broad daylight . . . (laughter) . . . and locked the door on him. (laughter)
Paul Revere’s manager called me up and said, ‘This group of yours ain’t ready to go on the road, they’re causin’ all kinds of trouble at the motel, they’ve got one of their equipment men naked out here in the swimmin’ pool’ . . . (laughter)
Mike: At 12:00 noon! (laughter) Skippy was always catchin’ it.
NFA: To backtrack a little, how did Tony Joes and the Mojos come about?
Carl: Well, we had Tony Joe right at the first along with the Bad Seeds. We used Tony’s own group which was just three guys — Tony, a bass player and a drummer.
We added a rhythm guitar player later on, and anytime we took the Bad Seeds to record we’d take Tony. Same way with concerts, we’d just put Tony on before the Bad Seeds, but he’d get booed off stage a lot, the kids just didn’t like him.
He was more of a nightclub act than anything else, concerts didn’t work for him. ‘Course later on he got real popular, I helped him get to Nashville ’cause I couldn’t do anything for him in Corpus as everything was rock & roll all the time, but he was one of the most talented guys I’ve ever met, an incredible musician.
NFA: The first Zakary Thaks 45 was picked up by Mercury, how did that happen?
The Zakary Thaks | Please | (J-Beck) 1967
Carl: Well, we cut ‘Bad Girl’ down at Jimmy Nicholls’ studio in McAllen on his two-track. In fact we’d do it all at once on one track and only use the second track for a harmony vocal, that gave the recordings a ‘live’ sound, made it more real.
So we had that record on J-Beck for about a month and I got a call one day from a guy at Mercury Records. He said he’d heard we had a hit record and he wanted to sign the group. I told him that the oldest guy in the band was 17 and the lead singer was only 15 which made for a tough legal problem in signing them, but he said he’d check with his lawyers and let me know what he could do.
So we set it up so I’d be the legal guardian of the band, it took us 6 months to go through the courts and set up trust funds for them, insurance, and . . .
NFA: This was all done for the Mercury record, so that Mercury would be legally satisfied?
Carl: That’s right, so anyway Mercury got it out real fast, in fact they bought some of my records and put Mercury labels on them so that they could get ’em out to DJs quick. But then they pushed the wrong side, ‘Bad Girl’, if they had promoted ‘I Need You’, I think we would’ve had a smash hit, as it was it didn’t do much.
NFA: How did the record do on J-Beck in Texas?
Carl: I think we sold more records than Mercury did, ’cause we had a big following all over South Texas.
NFA: When did the record come out?
Chris: I’d say, the summer of ’66, about July.
Carl: I used to have hell with these guys, one time we bought the Thaks a new Buick station wagon and a trailer, and Skippy, the road manager, would drive for them. I’d get ’em out of school Friday at noon and they’d take off to a gig, so they’d put their hands over Skippy’s eyes goin’ about 80 or 90 and he’d go off the side of the road and that trailer just beat the hell outa that station wagon . . . (laughter)
NFA: The Thaks was a young band, while the Bad Seeds were a little older, how young was the Thaks?
Chris: Well, I was 15, Pete was the oldest at 17 and Stan, Rex and John were 16.
NFA: That’s something that’s pretty rare these days, a group that young. Just don’t see it happening as much as it used to.
Carl: That’s right, but if you listen to these old Thaks records, Chris’ voice is just unbelievable for a 15 year old, in fact nobody could believe he was that young.
Mike: There’s just no incentive for bands today, if they play their own material they can’t get a job anywhere.
NFA: True . . . what about the ‘Face To Face’ 45, that was a big hit for the Thaks.
The Zakary Thaks | Please | (J-Beck) 1967
Carl: Yeah, biggest record I had on J-Beck, we really got into the guitar feedback on that record and the others too. We got known for having a lot of feedback on our records, think we got it from Jeff Beck.
Mike: Yeah, he showed it to us when the Bad Seeds played with the Yardbirds in Corpus, he had this distortion box that worked great. Smitty down in Corpus made our fuzz boxes for us . . . after we saw Jeff Beck’s and told Smitty what it was. Beck said someone in England was makin’ them and they weren’t even on the market yet.
NFA: Smitty didn’t have anything to work from, just the idea?
Mike: Right, we just told him Beck had a box that made the guitar distort at any volume, so he made one for Rod. He’d work on it awhile and get us to try it out, it wouldn’t be quite right so he’d work on it some more.
NFA: This all came about because Beck had one when you guys played with the Yardbirds?
Mike: Yeah, he had his guitar plugged into one and I asked him what it was and he said, ‘A fuzz box’, so Smitty finally perfected it and started selling them for $15.95.
Carl: Another thing Smitty did was fix our amps, every time the Bad Seeds would go somewhere we kept blowin’ amps, I mean blowin’ the hell outa them too ’cause we were turned way up plus the constant feedback.
So Smitty wired up some overload lights, they’d light up before the speakers would blow and anytime you saw the amps lightin’ up it was time to cut down.
NFA: Great idea.
Carl: Later on the company’s started building the lights into the amps.
NFA: Did the Thaks or Bad Seeds always open for Corpus shows like the Yardbirds?
Carl: Always, they opened for Eric Burdon and the Animals, the Byrds.
NFA: Was there anytime the Thaks and the Bad Seeds played on the same bill?
Chris: Just that one time at the Carousel Club battle of bands.
Mike: We wouldn’t play with them anymore after that.
NFA: How many records did ‘Face To Face’ sell?
Carl: I’d say several thousand copies, it was the last record. I had anything to do with on J-Beck ’cause I left right after that. Chris will have to tell you about the records that came after that.
NFA: What happened that caused you to leave?
Carl: Well, me and Jack Salyers and a fallin’ out. We’d been givin’ the KTSA DJs (Ricky Ware and Bruce Hathaway) a low rate for Zakary Thaks gigs ’cause they helped get us started by playin’ our records.
The Zakary Thaks | Please | (J-Beck) 1967
So Jack wanted to charge ’em more and I didn’t as KTSA had helped us all over South Texas, they were a hot station, anyway Jack bought me out and I left . . . I told the Thaks that it was Jack’s show now.
Chris: Then Jack brought in Lofton Cline as a partner, who was one of the original Pozo Seco singers. He had these big production idea’s and started spending a lot of money in the studio but it didn’t work out.
Carl: We used to bring in a Thaks record for $500 and these guys started spending $1500-$2000, and the results just weren’t the Thaks . . . and it broke Jack too.
NFA: So the last three J-Beck 45s were almost a different company?
Carl: Yeah, different people with different ideas.
NFA: Now the Young Society came in that period, who were they?
Carl: Another reason why me and Jack broke up . . . (laughter) They were a bunch of pretty harmony boys from Kingsville, right down Lofton Cline’s alley. I just didn’t like them.
NFA: I imagine those last J-Becks didn’t sell too good.
Chris: Right, they sold very poorly.
NFA: Did the Thaks break up after the J-Beck singles?
Chris: For a little while, but we reformed in a few months as a four-piece group without Pete, who was off doing something else, then we recorded “Everybody Wants to be Something” on Cee-Bee.
NFA: Now Cee-Bee was Carl’s label?
Carl: Right, the Thaks came to me ’cause J-Beck was no more and they wanted to get back together and do a record. So we came to Walt Andrus’ studio in Houston and cut the single. I think we even leased to ABC but they never put it out. (to be continued)
Zakary Thaks line-up:
Chris Gerniottis (vocals)
John Lopez (lead guitar)
Pete Stinson (guitar)
Rex Gregory (bass)
Stan Moore (drums)
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