through the backdoors of
time:
remembering clevo's rock & roll underdogs.
And so, what becomes of kids
who play guitar on sticks before they reach double digits?
The Backdoor Men were first
envisioned in the mid-1960s by the childhood friends Dan & Chris
Cook (yes, brothers) and Terry Hartman, all of Fairview Park and
all in the throes of an obsession kicked off first by the
British Invasion and later fueled by the Byrds, Bob Dylan, and
both urban and country blues. By the time the boys launched
themselves onto Cleveland's original music scene in 1977, they
had twisted these influences into a repertoire of a couple dozen
originals in the "nuggets" psycho-garage mode to go along with
their selection of British Invasion, American Psychedelic, and
New York/Detroit "underground" covers.
Initially, the boys in BDM
found it difficult to crack the Pirate's Cove, which was the
center of a scene that included contemporaries such as Pere Ubu,
the Dead Boys, and others. Their solution was to start their own
alternative showcase just down the street in a dingy bar called
Fitzpatrick's Rainbow. Soon the lads were booking a slew of acts
to accompany them in their weekly appearances in the small but
perfectly-vibed venue.
Bands like the Kneecappers,
Lepers, x-blank-x, Heironymous Bosch, and Public Enemy and more
suddenly had a new place to play, albeit mostly to friends and
fellow musicians, and to develop their material in a friendly
setting.
The boys were also among the
inhabitants of cheap rehearsal space in Cleveland's
then-moribund Warehouse District. First they shared space with
associates of the Dead Boys on West Sixth St.; later, after
suffering through numerous break-ins, they took over a huge loft
on West Ninth St., which they sublet to several other bands and
was the site of much drunken revelry. (It also featured on its
first floor a small tavern called the Lakefront, where they
would play a few years later.)
Soon Dan Cook, a journalist by
the harsh light of day, had launched a publishing venue with the
notorious VELAND magazine, his answer to the sporadically
published (though informative) CLE. VELAND took the piss out of
virtually EVERYONE, from the rotund David Thomas to the geeky
Andrew Klimek, and fueled a good battle between Fitzpatrick's
and the Cove, which eventually relented and began to book the
Backdoor Men.
The Backdoor Men played
virtually every venue available between Youngstown and Toledo
and all points in between in 1978 and 1980. Never particularly
sophisticated as musicians, they compensated with tons of
material. Cook and Hartman were extraordinarily prolific. From
the neo-psychedelia of Hartman's "Bomber's Moon" and Cook's
"Neutralizer," the boys progressed through offbeat pop takes
like Hartman's "Handicapped Kids" and Cook's "Bad Girl" to such
timeless gems as Hartman's "Life" and "Literary Tradition," and
Cook's "Ain't No Magic" and "Club Madrid."
In all, Cook and Hartman,
occasionally aided by Chris Cook, generated more than 100 fully
realized originals, a number of which were covered by other area
bands in need of material.
As 1980 drew to a close, Terry Hartman - a man who took
songwriting VERY seriously - was chafing to take full control,
and parted amicably with the Cooks to form Terry & The
Tornadoes. The Tornadoes were short-lived but critically
acclaimed, and were indeed the Cadillac Fleetwood that finally
realized fully the extent of Hartman's songwriting abilities.
During this period, Hartman teamed with Jimmy Zero and Johnny
Blitz of the Dead Boys to record two of his originals for a
single on Bomp Records, “Man with the X-Ray Eyes” b/w “Down with
the Lonely Boys,” but Bomp foundered and the single was never
released.
The Backdoor Men soldiered on,
working under a variety of names, self-releasing a 45 under the
moniker of “Bomber’s Moon,” and generating even more material.
Hartman eventually did return, and with the Cook Brothers and
BDM drummer Paul Nickels, formed the band that was to be their
swan song, Napoleon in Rags. Cook and Hartman put together a
fresh batch of material, honed it to perfection, played out for
a year, and then, like so many others of the era, appeared to
disappear into the mists of time....
UNTIL 2004, when they released
the acclaimed "Mohawk Combover," heralded as one of the great
comebacks in Cleveland punk history. Yes, the boys could still
write.
