For me, despite this inauspicious beginning, I was already dreaming the dream. I wasn’t even sure what it meant; was it the music, or the adventure or something else? The only thing I was sure of was that I was suddenly empowered with the resolve to pursue it. Even though the rainbow that I was to follow was itself a bit fuzzy, I had faith that it would lead me to the treasures that I desired. There was no backing out now. The journey had already begun and I was determined to make it all the way to the end of the road.
I was born and given the name Gary Wanstall on July 18th, 1950 in Chilliwack, BC, Canada, a little town in the Fraser Valley about sixty miles east of Vancouver. My father, Harry, was working for a meat packing company. I don’t know what he did there but it was some kind of an office job. He was a passive, gentle man and so, to my knowledge, he never hacked-up any cows. My mother, Margaret was, at that time a home-maker. She had this wonderful belief that the world should be fair. The only time she would ever get cross would be if someone acted unfairly towards someone else; her harshest reprimand was, “that’s not fair”, and that has kind of stuck with me through the years. I had a sister, Diane who was very nice, but she was eight years older than me so we never had a close relationship. She was in high school before I even started First Grade and was married with child and gone by the time I was fourteen.
My first real memories are in Vancouver at my grandparent’s house at the corner of Second and Trafalgar in a neighbourhood called Kitsilano. The family had returned to the city and lived there while my dad started working for a bank; I'm certain he didn‘t harm any livestock there. Groucho Marx is alleged to have said, “As a baby I was very young.” I agree. I have no recollection of Chilliwack. I have always considered my grandparent’s place to be my first home. It was 1952, the dawn of the golden age of the automobile, but milk was still delivered by horse-drawn wagon and there was even a junk man that came round with a big old horse pulling his cart.
My parents bought a little house at Oak Street and Fiftieth Avenue in 1953 when there was an actual working farm across the street. It was the Baby-Boom era and the farm was quickly subdivided into a breeding ground for punks like me. Eventually, every house on the block had kids. We would all meet up spontaneously in gangs of twenty or thirty or more and play hide & seek, kick-the-can, red-rover and such until it was dark and our moms hollered for us to come in.
While I was playing tag with my friends, a fifteen year old radio deejay named Red Robinson began to sneak an occasional rock & roll record onto the turntable during his program on CJOR Radio. On June 27th, 1956, Red presented Bill Haley & His Comets at the Kerrisdale Arena and rock & roll arrived in Vancouver. Later that year, on September 24th,Little Richard also played the Kerrisdale Arena where he was mobbed by fans and a near riot erupted. Red Robinsonmoved over to CKWX Radio. He became one of the important deejays in rock & roll when the station went to 50,000 watts – making it the most powerful radio station north of San Francisco and west of Winnipeg.
When Red introduced Elvis Presley at Empire Stadium on August 31st, 1957, all Hell broke loose. Vancouver teenagers went crazy and the police had to shut the show down after Elvis had sung only one song. They restored enough order to allow him to return but he only managed four more songs before he had to be whisked away for his own safety. He did a total of nineteen minutes. This was my town.
Little did I know, but rock and roll bands were springing up all over Vancouver. The Hi-Fives, The Orbits and Vancouver’s first recording stars, The Stripes with vocalist Jim Morrison and a guitarist named Ian Tyson had a double-sided single, Ready To Rock and So Long Goodbye on the Arctic label. Les Vogt & the Prowlers came out with Rock Me Baby, Get a Move and I'm Feeling Sorry all recorded at Al Reusch's Aragon Studios and released on Aragon records. All these great bands played teen dances throughout the Pacific Northwest.
In 1958 I got a Sony transistor radio for my eighth birthday. It was an aqua-marine plastic beauty, top-of-the-line, with a genuine imitation leather carrying case. I carried that radio everywhere I went and listened to all of the glorious rock 'n roll stars of the fifties; Little Richard, Elvis, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Fats Domino, The Everly Brothers and every single one of the Bobbys.
Even though I gave no conscious thought to music, it was having a powerful influence on me. I loved 'novelty' songs like the ‘58 hits, Witch Doctor by David Seville and Chantilly Lace by The Big Bopper. Whenever I hear those songs today I think back to long hot summer days in a time when I had no cares in the world. In a case of 'youth is wasted on the young', I remember The Purple People Eater by Sheb Wooley playing on the radio one day as a cute little girl named Debbie Turpin from my Grade Two class chased me all over the playground for a kiss. At the time it was sickening . . . Years later, in high school, Debbie developed into the prettiest girl in school and would sooner have stuck a fork in her eye than kiss me. Frankie Avalon’s, Venus, in 1959, is another mint song that invokes strong childhood memories. It was probably on the radio when I was home enjoying an unearned day-off from school with some faked illness. In the summer of 1960 Ray Peterson’s sappy hit, Tell Laura I Love Her made me cry when I first heard it on my way to baseball practice.
There was something in the story of the young would-be race car driver who gets killed trying to win a thousand dollars to buy his girl an engagement ring that really got to me. It’s odd because, as a ten year old, I had no real concept of love. I felt safe and secure in my family, and nobody could ask for a better childhood, but there were never any displays of affection or talk of love at my house.
I believe that it was my willingness to accept pretty much any story wholeheartedly, to feel it as though it was real, that has always made me an overly sensitive audience. When I went to see the movie, Plan Nine From Outer Space(universally lauded as the worst movie ever made), at the Orpheum Theatre on Granville Street in 1959, I thought it was so real and got so scared that I had to run out and wait in the lobby. All my little friends came out laughing at the absurdity of the film while I had to sleep with the lights on for days after so that the fake monster with the long fingernails wouldn't get me.
I didn't buy records. Firstly, what little money I had was spent on baseball cards. I had a huge collection comprised of thousands of pristine cards including Mickey, Willie, Whitey and Yogi as well as Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Warren Spahnand all of the immortals of the time. I may have buried the entire priceless collection somewhere in the back yard. I wish I knew. It would be worth a fortune today. Secondly, my sister bought all the Ricky Nelson, Connie Francis and Johnny Horton 45s I could handle. For some curious reason, He’s So Fine by The Chiffons in 1963 was the first 45 rpm record I ever bought. Seems like an odd choice but I liked their 'Doo Lang Doo Lang' Doo-Wop sound. Following that, I got on track right away by making Twist and Shout by The Beatles my first album purchase.
I never liked school. On my first day in Grade One I cried so long and with such indignation that the principal telephoned my mother to come and pull me out of there. When I discovered that this was something I had to do five times a week for twelve years I believed that my life was over. I despised school so intensely that it physically hurt to attend class. I hated those big clocks they had in every classroom. I would sit and watch the second hand plod from one digit to the next as if I were trapped in some sort of purgatory for dummies. For most of Elementary School I thought I was stupid but as I squeaked into High School I realized that I just wasn’t interested in any of this.
It was around this time when I discovered something I did find interesting ... Girls!
If this is a story about sex, drugs and rock & roll (and I’m certain that it is) then it begins in the classrooms of Grade Eight, where half the population was most definitely of interest to me, an obsession that has lasted a lifetime. I don’t think I was