INTERVIEW: People get ready for Vanilla Fudge at Hippiefest Tour 2018
Top photo: Vanilla Fudge have many classic songs, including their cover of “You Keep Me Hangin’ On.” Photo courtesy of the band / Provided with permission.
Vanilla Fudge have claimed an important spot in the canon of rock history. The band members have been going strong for 50 years and continue to bring their reinterpreted classics to audiences around the United States. This summer they join Hippiefest Tour 2018, joining the likes of Rick Derringer, Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels and Badfinger featuring Joey Molland.
The bands will stop Thursday, July 26 at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Mark Stein, lead vocalist, keyboardist, composer and arranger for Vanilla Fudge, called the upcoming concert a “great potpourri of classic rock music,” and the New Jersey concerts will be extra special because the band can trace their history back to the Garden State.
“It’s my old stomping ground because I’m from New Jersey originally, so it’s going to be cool,” Stein said in a recent phone interview. “I got some old family and friends coming down to check out some Fudge music and all the other acts on it, so we’re looking forward to it.”
Stein was born in Bayonne, and raised in both Bayonne and Jersey City. His early days of musicianship would see him playing local dances run by Catholic Youth Organizations (CYO) and Jewish community centers. It was the early 1960s, and he was cutting his teeth in gymnasiums with other teenagers.
“I was really a street singer when I was 13-14,” he said. “Many years later they called it doo-wop, but a lot of the harmonies started that way. Yeah, that was a great time. It was a great area, some great communities back in those days.”
Stein’s introduction to music actually goes back to when he was 4 years old, and he used to watch his uncle play piano in Bayonne.
“I used to come over his house,” he remembered. “When I was a kid, I used to watch him. He’d go into the kitchen, and I’d sneak over to his piano and start fingering melodies. I used to hear stuff naturally, so I pretty much have been doing it a few years out of the womb. I’ve been doing it all my life. For a period, I was playing guitar when I was 11-12 years old. I actually had a record out when I was 11. I was on TV with Sam Cooke and some other classic artists back in those days, and keyboards came back to me in high school when a band called the Dynamics from Bayonne High School asked me to join the band. There happened to be an electric organ on the stage at Yale University. It had to be ‘64, and I just jumped on it. Everybody said, ‘Man, that’s really what you should be doing, man. You keep killing it on that thing.’ I had a lot of background from playing accordion when I was 9 years old. All the Italian and Jewish kids were told to take accordion lessons back in those days, but ever since, I guess since about 16-17 years old, I’ve been on the keys. I guess the rest is history.”
Later in the decade, Stein and his bandmates were influenced by the so-called Long Island sound and their large “production numbers.” There were the Rich Kids, the Vagrants and, of course, the Rascals.
“Back in those days, there was a lot of songwriting going on,” he said. “Songs were written for a lot of the solo artists, but a lot of the bands were doing cover songs and coming up with different approaches to it. So Vanilla Fudge is basically a combination of the white blue-eyed soul of the Rascals and a lot of the production numbers that Leslie West’s old band the Vagrants used to do, which kind of inspired me greatly. We used to take songs like ‘You Keep Me Hangin’ On’ and Beatles songs like ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and break them down and reform them, almost kind of rewrite the songs through our symphonic approach to arranging. At the time, it was a whole new sound, a whole new take, slowing things down with these long arrangements. It kind of made everybody turn their heads in those days. We were the darlings of underground radio in the late ’60s, and we all became songwriters as the years went on. That was the sound of the day, for sure.”
Stein’s fans can relive many of these memories in his first book, You Keep Me Hangin’ On: The Raging Story of Rock Music’s Golden Age.
COMING BACK TO JERSEY
Audience members can expect to hear many of Vanilla Fudge’s reinterpretations at Hippiefest Tour 2018. Whether it’s their monster hit, “You Keep Me Hangin’ On,” or “Ticket to Ride,” “People Get Ready,” “Take Me for a Little While,” “Shotgun” or “Season of the Witch,” the setlist at the State Theatre will be a trip down memory lane, for sure.
Although not all the memories are 50 years old. One particular one is fairly recent.
“‘Take Me for a Little While’ off our first album … was just sampled by Kanye West on a song called ‘Ghost Town’ on the Yee album,” Stein said. “The thing has got like 100 million streams as of a couple weeks ago, globally, which is pretty amazing, so thanks Kanye. We’re part of the new era now.”
He added about the expected set list: “We try to stick to the songs that our fans really want to hear, and we throw in a couple other songs and arrangements from our latest CDs, like the Spirit of ’67. We redid ‘I’m a Believer,’ which got a lot of critical acclaim and songs like that. Yeah, it’s just a combination of the old and new, for sure.”
Unlike many other rock bands, especially ones with 50 years of musical history, Vanilla Fudge’s lineup has largely stayed the same. Stein is joined on stage by original members Joey Brennan (drums) and Vince Martell (guitar and vocals), plus Pete Bremy, who filled in after Tim Bogert’s retirement, on bass.
“We’re still here,” Stein said. “Carmine, Vinny and myself, three original members. Tim Bogert has been retired for about 10 years, but we got Pete Bremy, who has been with us on bass and backing vocals for the last 10 years. Yeah, we take pride in that fact because we’re still out there drawing people, and our energy is pretty good for a bunch of young guys. But we’re still rocking, and actually we really have been playing together on and off for over 50 years as a band. That’s pretty cool. Guinness Book of World Records is going to be calling us any day now I’m sure.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Vanilla Fudge is part of Hippiefest Tour 2018. They will play Thursday, July 26 at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Click here for more information and tickets.
