My Time in a Boy Rock Band
By: Terry Mansfield
Tags: Musicians, Teenagers, Life Lessons, Music, Band

My Time in a Boy Rock Band

As a teenager, I was a member of a boy rock band in the mid-1960s. Alas, fame and fortune eluded us, but we still had lots of fun. This is my story. Terry Mansfield Follow Dec 6, 2020 · 4 min read

Image by Debi Brady from Pixabay

I was 14 years old when four of us from our neighborhood in north St. Louis decided to form a boy rock band. The group was called Phantasmagorical Dream. I know that sounds like a weird name for a band but, remember, this was the mid-1960s, and the whole Peace and Love Movement was picking up speed. So that seemed like a cool name.

In retrospect, it was a pretty dumb name. It was way too long for one thing. And also, most people didn’t have a clue what the word “phantasmagorical” meant. I didn’t either until I joined the band and looked it up.

We created some original songs and also, of course, performed cover songs of the hits of other musicians. To be honest, our original songs were pretty good. If only we had had a savvy agent. Not only did we not have a savvy agent, but we also didn’t have an agent at all. We didn’t even know how to go about getting one. So we lost our chance to be rich and famous, I guess.

So, after we had put together the ten or so songs we could play at a paid gig, our fearless leader Les found a way to get us some bookings around the greater St. Louis area.

I think we got paid around $100 bucks for each two-hour set we did. Split four ways that amounted to only $25 apiece. But we didn’t care that much about the money, although it was nice to get it. We just wanted to have fun making music in front of large crowds. Okay, there weren’t any large crowds, but it was usually at least 25 or 30 people, which seemed massive to us.

We must have been doing something right because we never had any trouble booking gigs. Plus, we were pretty cheap to book. But, of course, the gigs were only on Friday or Saturday nights because we were just school kids, and our parents wouldn’t let us perform on weekdays or Sundays. That was fine with me. During junior high and high school, I wasn’t much of a student in those days (I rocked those grades later on in college, though).

If you're wondering what instrument I played in the band, well, I’m not sure I’d call it an instrument, although technically it was. I played the tambourine because I hadn’t learned how to play anything else. You’re probably thinking that playing the tambourine is easy, but I can assure you that it isn’t. You have to know when to do a loud rattle versus a soft rattle.

And there are times you need to bang the thing hard on your hand or leg at just the right time. I got pretty good at it but not good enough to go on and become a professional tambourine player (although, technically speaking, I guess I was a pro of sorts because we got paid for performing).

My forte, if I had one, was my singing voice. I didn’t sing lead vocals but I had a nice way of blending into the chorus to help produce a mellow sound overall. There was one original song, in particular, that was a cut above. I truly believe it might have been a hit if we could have gotten it in front of the right music guru. Oh well…

However, all good things must come to an end (why is that, anyway?). Thus, after a year or so, our band broke up, and we went about our separate teenage ways.

I’ve had a lot of experiences in my rather long life so far, but being in a rock and roll band as a teenager ranks right up there near the top. It was a lot of fun, and I made a bit of money, to boot.

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Thanks for reading.