A Few Moments with Felix Cavaliere of The Rascals
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Originally from Pelham, New York, Felix Cavaliere spoke to us from his home in Nashville, Tennessee. He moved there in 1988 to make new music, but he’s ecstatic that people still want to hear the Rascals’ classics from fifty years ago. He just can’t believe it was fifty years ago! Make no mistake, the Rascals’ hits truly were classics. Was there a record that more perfectly encapsulated the Summer of Love than “Groovin’”? These days, Felix intersperses the songs with some behind-the-scenes stories, so expect a special treat when he takes the stage. The songs you know—the stories you don’t!
It has been said that by age thirteen or thereabouts, you know what you want to do in life. Was there a catalytic event that made you say, “MUSIC is what I want to do?”
I’ve heard that, too, but it’s not really true in my case. I studied music from age five. Studied eight years. Then I went to pre-med school in Syracuse. Lou Reed was in the same class. Events happened. My mom was the one who prodded me to become a musician, but her passion was classical music. She died when I was fourteen and I turned away from classical because you couldn’t alter it. I had some creativity, and I wanted to play my own music. My instructor would say, “How dare you change Schubert!” One summer, I saw an organ trio in New Rochelle, New York. I’d never seen or heard anything like that. They were a jazz-blues trio: organ, saxophone, and drums. That was my epiphany. Organs like that were so expensive then, but a guy in a department store in New York helped me get it financed. Started with a small one. I just always loved that sound. I started playing all the keyboard-based hits by Fats Domino, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis. Then I had a little pop band in Syracuse, and gave up med school pretty quick. So it happened gradually.
You were in Joey Dee & the Starlighters before the Rascals. Only a few years separated the “Peppermint Twist” from “Groovin’,” but the sound and the look changed so dramatically in those years. Even on your first LP you were in matching outfits, but the cartoons on the Groovin’ LP were so different. How did that cultural transformation feel from the inside?
Interesting question. A cultural transformation is what it was. We were playing college campuses, then I joined Joey Dee and went to Europe. We were on tour there with the Beatles, and that was before they made it over here. That really started my own little magical mystery tour. After the Beatles made it here, I said to the guys in the band that we should start our own group. I said, “Let’s stop being sidemen.” The thing with the outfits was all at the behest of club owners. Back when we started, clubs required a tie and jacket. If you wanted to work, you dressed up. We tried to find a way around it, like those ridiculous outfits on our first LP cover. Then things changed so dramatically. Audiences wanted us to dress like them, or show them how to dress. Such a transformation, and it happened so quickly.
Today, you see a lot of kids in their twenties listening to Sixties music and dressing like hippies. What do you think they relate to from that era?
I’m so happy and blessed to have been around then, and to be around now! The Sixties, by which we mean the late Sixties, were all about freedom of expression. It changed the culture of this country and the world. I think a lot of kids today wish they’d been around for that. The music, the art, the energy. I just can’t believe it was fifty years ago. I’m scared that it was fifty years ago! I can’t imagine me in 1965 listening to the pop music of 1915! The funny thing is that THIS is a golden era, too. The internet for better or worse has changed everything. Just this week I heard that the Beatles have finally made their music available for streaming.
You were signed to Atlantic Records. As an R&B fan, that must have been your dream label.
The incredible thing to us was that this record label that we worshipped would allow us to produce ourselves. Three-quarters of my record collection was Atlantic records. We had to turn down more lucrative deals, and some of the other guys weren’t too happy about that, but I felt that Atlantic was where we needed to be. I had an idea, a conception, of what I wanted our music to be, and Atlantic allowed us to realize us. They put us with a pair of geniuses, Arif Mardin and Tom Dowd. Even the Atlantic offices and studio were hallowed ground to me. We were recording where John Coltrane, Ray Charles, Miles Davis, and others that I idolized had recorded. You could feel that somehow. There was pure energy there. It was all about the music, not the dollars. It was a family business. They cared about us, and they cared about the music.
Is it true that Otis Redding stuck his head in the door when you were recording and said, “It’s true, you guys ARE white”?
Yes, and he was a real card. I loved him as a singer of course, but also as a person. Atlantic was THAT kind of place. You never knew who you’d see there.
Tell us something we never knew about one of the Rascals’ hits.
“Good Lovin’” wasn’t our song. I’d heard it on the radio done by a group called the Olympics, the guys who did “Western Movies,” if you remember that. Their record was done as a Latin cha-cha. I thought it could be a lot cooler if we did it to a rock beat, so that’s the way I started doing it in our sets, and the people just went nuts. Everyone would just get up off their chairs and jump on the floor to dance. It was amazing. Tom Dowd gave it a “live” feel. For a long time, I thought that the Olympics did the song first, but it was originally put out by a guy called Limmie Snell, who later had a group called Limmie & the Family Cooking. He did it with different lyrics. Then came the Olympics. But we got the Number One hit!
Was there one of your songs that you knew was a hit from the moment you finished it?
If you’re a songwriter or singer then you believe that about almost everything you do. It’s how it’s perceived that’s the key. At Atlantic Records back then, everyone in the hierarchy from the company president to the secretaries was on the same floor. If you’d done something really good, the first indication was that everyone came in to listen to it. Then, of course, it was up to the company to get it out there and get it to where it needed to be: the public. It’s the public that makes a hit, no matter what any of us in the business think.
“People Got to Be Free” stemmed from a very personal response to the assassinations of 1968, didn’t it?
Did it ever! That song delivered a statement of my politics, my cosmic consciousness, if you like. My girlfriend then was working for Robert Kennedy. I was in Jamaica with the band and this lady I was seeing was actually with Robert Kennedy when he was killed. I had a shortwave radio and I was listening to it when I heard the news. It just came over me that I had to make a statement. Atlantic was actually opposed to it, but people were listening to us, and they counted on us for more than just catchy tunes. The song said what needed to be said. No one would have to try to figure out where we stood. And it got a lot of airplay in places where people wanted to be free: eastern Europe, Africa, and so on.
On the cruise, fans will get to hear your music. Will you also share some stories and reflections or do you keep it strictly to the music?
What I’ve found over the last five years or so is that people really love to hear the stories of how it happened. Used to be that I’d go out on stage and sing my songs. That was what I figured the audience wanted. Now I see they want more, and I’m honored to give it to them. I have stories!
What do you think about in the moment before you step out on-stage?
First thing, I hope there’s a good crowd out there, and they’ve come to see me. I know that’ll be the case on the Flower Power Cruise. Usually, you can feel the mood of the crowd before the first song. You know what you’ve got to do to win them over.