INTERVIEW: Felix Cavaliere on his life as a Rascal
Photo: Felix Cavaliere’s new book is called Memoir of a Rascal. Photo courtesy of the artist / Provided by Leighton Media with permission.
Born in the suburban towns around New York City, the members of the legendary rock band the Rascals built a songbook that became the soundtrack of a cultural moment in the late 1960s. They penned enduring songs that continue to play on radio stations in 2022 — tunes like “Groovin’,” “Good Lovin’,” “A Beautiful Morning,” “I’ve Been Lonely Too Long,” “People Got to Be Free” and “How Can I Be Sure.”
Felix Cavaliere, a well-respected singer-songwriter, was critical to the Rascals’ success, and he continues to bring the songbook to adoring fans around the country. He has a new co-headlining tour with the Monkees’ Micky Dolenz, which kicks off in April, and he recently published a new autobiography, Memoir of a Rascal: From Pelham, NY to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
The book idea came to Cavaliere back when the original Rascals reunited for a Broadway show called Once Upon a Dream in 2013.
“This is probably the last time we will ever really all be able to get together,” Cavaliere said of the reunion. “Well, during that show, we were doing publicity for it. We were doing press conferences, and I noticed that at the press conference, everybody had a different answer to the same questions. And I said to myself, you know, this is very interesting. Humanity has a way of changing stories in mid-flight, so I really thought it would be a good idea for me to write down my perceptions, my views, my thoughts before they got muddled in other people’s ideas. It really was an amazing thing. Someone would ask a question, for example, ‘How did you start the group? How did you get the name?’ Everyone had a different answer, so I thought I would write a book and at least put my views down.”
Of the original Rascals, two members were from New Jersey, and two were from New York, including Cavaliere, who grew up in Pelham, New York. “There’s a sense of belonging that we’ve always had with the Tri-State area,” he said. “It’s like that song, ‘If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.’ It really was a boom to us, no question.”
In the book, Cavaliere reminiscences about New York City and its suburbs before the age of disco. This was the 1960s, and there were many clubs in the city, especially in Greenwich Village. Today, when Cavaliere visits the Big Apple, there are few reminders of the cultural spots from 60 years ago.
“It was a very interesting scene,” Cavaliere said. “The things that were interesting about it, besides the fact that it gave you a place to work, is that they brought in entertainers and groups from the South and from places that normally, unless you were able to travel, you would never see or hear. So that really, really influenced all of us. For example, there was a place called the Wagon Wheel, and it was on 45th Street where the Peppermint Lounge was. I saw people doing what Jimi Hendrix was doing with his guitar with his teeth and behind his back way before Jimi brought it to the masses. These people came up with all of these ideas, and it was a very lucrative, fun place in those days.”
Back then, Cavaliere was a pre-med student at Syracuse University. When he was in upstate New York, he started a band and found some local success. They would play fraternity parties, homecoming parties, football games and basketball games. He was enjoying his time in the group, treating it like a side gig; he never thought a music career would come from those early days.
“Little did I know that I was going to be a musician, let’s put it like that,” he said. “The way the story evolved is I took with this band a summer job in the Catskill Mountains, and I was kind of discovered there for want of a better term. A group saw me, this is the group called Joey Dee and the Starlighters. They were off to Europe to do a tour, and their organ player quit. They called me up and asked me to go. Well, I kind of got permission from my father and family to take some time off and go. … This group called the Beatles opened up for us in Germany and Sweden. No one had heard of them yet over here. That really kind of did it because besides the fun that they were having with all these screaming young ladies, I just was able to get an idea of what they were doing. They were doing singing and playing, and I knew I could do that. I thought, wow, this looks like fun. That was really the turning point for me, and at that point in time, I decided to give it a try.”
There was some apprehension about this career choice from Cavaliere’s family. His father was a “medical man,” as the musician put it. In fact, he came from a long line of medical professionals, so the idea of not following through with a medical degree was a tricky one to navigate. His family realized there were potential pitfalls in the music business.
“The money that acts were making was nowhere near the money acts are making today,” Cavaliere said. “They were supportive only because they saw the interest that people had in my work, in playing and singing, but prior to that, they were a lot more realistic than I was, which goes with youth. We can do anything when we’re young.”
The Rascals came about shortly thereafter. Cavaliere said the best players and best singers came together for this quartet, and the chemistry worked from day one. He knew they had something special because they almost immediately found a crowd of onlookers.
“We went to my father’s home, in the basement, to rehearse,” he said. “Well, that was right across the street from a high school, right literally across the street, so from the first day when we started to practice, the kids were outside listening to the music. … We knew we had something. I think there’s a certain magic. Groups don’t happen by chance. They are God-given. They may not be the best musicians, but they fit together correctly.”
These stories and more can be found in Memoir of a Rascal.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Memoir of a Rascal: From Pelham, NY to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame by Felix Cavaliere is now available. Click here for more information.
