THE BEAT GOES ON

THE BEAT GOES ON

Chevy Chase: "We Almost Reunited The Beatles!"

HOLLYWOOD—At last it can be revealed—the Beatles DID plan reuniting to appear on the top NBC-TV comedy show, Saturday Night, but their "surprise" for millions of nationwide viewers went wrong, said Chevy Chase, one of the stars of the show.

Chevy talked about the illfated reunion for the first time during a break in filming at the NBC Studios in Hollywood, where he was making a guest appearance on the new Dick Van Dyke Show.

"When Paul McCartney was over here with Wings I stayed with him for a time, and he told me about it," Chevy said. "I've never talked about it before because I felt no one would take it seriously.

"That's one of the major disadvantages of being one of the stars of a show like Saturday Night. Everyone tends to think you are spoofing all the time. I told Paul that. He just winked!"

Chevy said that because of all the rumors circulating about a Beatles reunion sometime during the Wings tour it was decided to "make fun" of the stories on Saturday Night.

"We started out by offering the Beatles ridiculously low sums of money to appear on our show. It was a fun thing. The highest offer we got to was 3,000 dollars.

"We said we didn't mind if. they reached an understanding with Ringo when it came to splitting up the cash. We also offered them all a free night at a dumpy New York hotel with an elevator, and room service until midnight.

"After we Had done all that we didn't think about it at all. We certainly didn't take it THAT seriously."

Then, said Chevy, he met Paul McCartney, and the exBeatle admitted that he and his three Liverpudlian chums decided to take Saturday Night up on their none-tootempting offer.

"When he told me I was speechless," said Chevy. "At first I thought he was joking, but he was serious, and he insisted it was their intention to appear. He convinced me, and comedians such as myself are born skeptics."

How did the great event nearly happen? Chevy continued with the story.

"Both Paul and John were watching Saturday Night together in New York. They thought the show and quite possibly our offer was hilarious. They decided to rebound the joke on us by reforming the Beatles and appearing on the show.

"Apparently they seem to have a liking for our style of show. John telephoned George, who was watching the program as well. Paul told me that George is a big fan of Saturday Night. He says it's the nearest thing on American TV to Monty Python. George felt it would be a good idea to go on the show. He talked with Ringo, who was staying with him, and he agreed. Ringo hadn't been watching the show, but he said he had heard of us.

"All four agreed to meet outside the NBC Studios in New York. Neither John nor Paul knew where we were situated. As a result, John's chauffeur got hopelessly lost. By the time they arrived at the studios the others had already been waiting outside in their car for half an hour.

"John's chauffeur went inside, and asked where the Saturday Night studio was. He was told we had gone off the air 20 minutes earlier. Paul said they felt frustrated at first, but then started laughing. John said, 'Never mind, lads, we've got another appointment tomorrow —it could be our lucky break.'

"Before that particular show went out we were joking about what we would do if the Beatles actually did turn up. I said it would be a good idea to hide all the musical instruments, and not let them play! I also felt it would be hilarious to have physically prevented them from getting on. It would have made great TV.

"As all this was happening we could have let someone like Hoyt Axton come on, and give us a song. This was all hypothetical. I never dreamed they would actually take up our offer.

"If they had arrived in time, we would have let them go straight on. We would have forgotten the jokes, and even Saturday Night for once..."

Barry Dillon

Will The Real Gene Simmons Please Spit-Up!

What would the by-product of cross breeding a rock star that dresses like a half bat, half lizard gargoyle with the Internal scrapings of 38 LA groupies be? Remember you saw it here first. Unfortunately, Gene Jr. was born [hatched?] without human hands, but thanks to the miracles of modern technoscience, flesh like artificial hand/gloves can be worn to cover up the unsightly clawlike hooks usually found on baby vampire bats.

Elton Pioneers Hollywood Mass Transit

Apparently thoroughly disgruntled with the frenzy of sell-out stadium concerts, Elton John has ripped up his recording contract and set out to find a new way of life. With the profits from his LA soccer team, Elton has purchased a whole line of mini-buses to service the beautiful people who would rather spend their hard inherited money on swimming pools rather than Continentals to do their weekly marketing chores. Mr. John is for the most part quite happy with his tinsel town dial-a-ride venture. When asked to comment on the reactions of his customers, he replied with a sheepish grin, "Most of the big stars don't actually ride themselves, but they do send their maids."

Tubes Displace Rubes. Reveal Boobs

SAN FRANCISCO—"Sex is like a bank account," began the W.C. Fields lookalike in his best Fieldsian accent. "When you make a withdrawal, you lose interest." Even with that side-splitter the judges (all eight Tubes) chose three other finalists: a test tube baby born into the brave new world with a beard and red tights; a human teevee with an actual set mounted on a silver painted cardboard frame; and a bare-breasted winged woman dubbed Isis, who drew lustful leers from MC Fee Waybill.

The occasion was a break for the Tubes who had just sold out 20 consecutive shows at Bimbo's, and promo for the futuristic flick Tunnel Vision. An overflow crowd of garden variety postHasbury youth turned out to displace the usual winos and white-shod conventioneers from Amarillo at Union Square. About 70 costumed contestants—among them a latter day aborigine, Lil Bo Peep and her Syphilitic Sheep, a fern enema, several white punks on dope, and an all-silver woman (Spirit of a Snail Trail)—perked up everyone's corpuscles. The competition was stiff when a man dressed as a tube of Crest said, "Squeeze me from the bottom; I'm long but I'm straight," and two secretaries cooed, "Can we take some dick-tation, sir?", but the winning threesome were clearly favorites. When it came their time to pick a box (not a curtain, Monty), shouts of "Keep the money!" from the crowd could not sway Isis from choosing #3—a fivefoot wide Muntz TV. The other guys each picked Yamahas which they promptly revved up, not realizing they were Yamaha guitars.

Clark Peterson

Get Your Wings!

SAN DIEGO - A scuffle started when a six-foot chicken was accused of blocking the aisle at an Aerosmith rock concert here in the Sports Arena.

The chicken—or, more accurately, rooster-costumed Theodore Giannoulas, 23— "started flailing at one of my guards with his wings," said the head guard.

A radio promotion man, for whom the chicken was working, Ralph Haberman, claimed one of the concert bouncers then knocked Giannoulas unconscious.

"They threw him against a wall in one of the side rooms at the arena," said Haberman.

Both Giannoulas and Haberman were booked for investigation of battery by police after one of the security guards made a citizen's arrest.

Barry Dillon

Ted To Go Skinhead??

DETROIT—Sources close to ex-Amboy Duke guitarist Ted Nugent today confirmed rumors that the King of Motor City Madness is seriously considering a radical cropping of his notoriously luxurious locks. Reportedly, his mammoth mane has propagated itself to the extent that it now lies in direct line-of-fire of any casual flatulence His Majesty might experience, rendering that vector both frizzled and malodorous in the extreme; hard to keep clean too.

The same sources also hint that in using normal sanitary facilities Mr. Nugent has had to take special care lest he inadvertently moisten the furthest extremities of his mop. Reportedly, at home he has installed special fixtures, including "a rather enlarged version of your standard moustache cup."

Howard S.-M. Wuelfing

Say It Again, Lou

Lou Reed should have a new album out by the time you read this, and unless Lou has had a change of Rock and Roll Heart in the last couple months, it contains the legendary-but-heretofore-unreleased "I Wanna Be Black," which boasts such immortal lines as "I wanna be black and have natural rhythm, and shoot off 20 feet of jism," or "I wanna be black like Malcolm X, and put a hex on President Kennedy's grave." Ever the pluralist, he dumps on every other known ethnic group, too, in the course of the song. I caught up with Reed in a Manhattan rehearsal studio the day before his band was due to start record^ ing, and during a brief break, he explained why he waited until now to unleash it on the world.

"We only did it three times last tour. We did it first time in Providence, R.I., and then in Boston. And we found out that you can't make fun of Puerto Ricans in either one of those cities because it doesn't mean anything. But Jews go over really tremendous; like, they really get off," he recollected. "And then we did it at the Felt Forum. The security people are black and, you know, they seemed to be having fun. And then ... it caused too much of a commotion, so I decided not to put it out because too many people wanted to hear it.

"You ever notice when there's nothing happening, nigger music—pardon me— soul brothers and their turbulent rhythm kinda takes over? It gets palled disco."

Among Lou's other observations, virtually none of which were prompted by any particular question, but all of which seemed to be quite important to him at the time, are the following.

ON JOHN DENVER: "I love John Denver. If he can do that. . . hey! Nice quivering Irish tenor, he's written great songs, some real standards."

ON JEFF BECK: "He doesn't let Marshalls fall on his head anymore, so progress has been made. And he's got his talking duck throat. Jazz-rock: if you can't do good rock and you can't do good jazz, combine the two bad things and you get one real piece of shit. But why not, he's English."

ON SECURITY IN NEW YORK: "You notice the Doberman pinscher parade out there? People who live in studio apartments get Doberman pinschers: German shepherds mating with them. It's a new breed . . . pinshep."

ON THE ALGONQUIN: "Dorothy Parker used to have a spritzer there. I tried to have one and they wouldn't serve me. It gets very crowded and the waiters aren't what they once were. They're like the waiters down in Chinatown that go org shrt glrb . . . four egg rolls and pay.

ON HIS RECENT IMPROMPTU CLUB APPEARANCE WITH JOHN CALE: "I wouldn't want a steady diet of it. In that type of situation, it's nice to delve into something that existed for real and make it exist again for real. The Velvet Underground existed, and it should stay . . . it is what it was and it was what it is, and the various components by themselves can't be the Velvet Underground. Nostalgia is a very good reason not to do it more than once or twice."

ON SEAN CONNERY: "He's going bald, isn't he? But I heard he's got a lot of integrity. I liked him as James Bond. I don't go to the movies. It's two hours long. You're just sitting there in the same place for two hours. With air conditioning. And other people."

John Morthland

Squid-Rock Emerges

WASHINGTON D.C.—With a sound described as anything from a "Tibetan calypso beat" to a beached whale puking perfume, the American Underwater Band can't miss.

The band was created from the ruins of a Washington group known as Evolution by Richard Bailey, a former Westinghouse toaster whiz who wears a woven aluminum necktie. He's always wanted to hear what music would sound like underwater and, not satisfied with Mike Oldfield albums, armed his musicians with onion dicers, frying pans and other kitchen utensils, miked 'em up and immersed them in a local pool. They were quickly "booed out of the water."

Damp but not discouraged, the band set about inventing their own instruments, the Burratone, which is sort of a Tupperware xylophone, the Pyrex Glass Harp, and other bizarre contraptions made of old pantyhose containers and lacerated wastebaskets. Since then, it's been all high tide for the group, and they've played numerous pools and one gig in the Caribbean Ocean off St. Martin, as well as scoring underwater films.

Asked why he plays music underwater, Bailey is quick to reply, "Why play music at all?" Ask a stupid question . . .

Rick Johnson

5 YEARS AGO

Peter Frampton Goes Solo!

Humble Pie leader Steve Marriott announced that guitarist Peter Frampton would be leaving the Pie to pursue a solo career. (Think he can cut it?—Ed.) None other than Rick Derringer of Edgar Winter's White Trash is being mentioned as a possible Frampton replacement.