<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0If you are old enough to remember Johnny Carson\u2019s \u2018Carnac the Magnificent\u2019, you can skip the explanation.\u00a0 Carson, decked out with his cape and oversized headgear as Carnac, would hold a sealed envelope to his forehead and predict the answer to the question posed on a slip of paper inside.\u00a0 For example, Carnac would say, \u201cThe one hundred yard dash,\u201d to which his sidekick Ed McMahon would echo, \u201cThe one hundred yard dash\u201d (visibly annoying Carnac).\u00a0 The Magnificent one would then tear off the end of the envelope, blow into it (always part of the schtick), and pull out a slip of paper with the question he has already answered.\u00a0 Not to leave you in suspense, but the question in this case was, \u201cWhat comes after the 100 yard prune?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0For our purposes here, my Carnac like answer in the title above (rip open the envelope and blow in the end, please) is, \u201cHave you ever heard Ronnie Montrose play the guitar?\u201d\u00a0 Montrose is a musician who is often cited as an influence by other guitar players, but his name does not carry the same public recognition as some like Eddie Van Halen, Jimmy Page, or (insert your favorite guitarist\u2019s name here).\u00a0 As the list of artists Montrose recorded and toured with attests, there is little chance you have<\/span> not<\/span><\/i> heard him play (unless you shut off your radio from 1970 on).\u00a0 Montrose is described as a guitar player\u2019s player, a visionary, a pioneer, and one of the most important guitarists in early hard rock;\u00a0 he just did not become a household name like\u00a0 many of the players he influenced did. \u00a0 A decade after his death, he is still revered in guitar circles.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Sadly, Montrose took his own life on March 3, 2012 at age 64.\u00a0 When his death was announced, many assumed it was due to his prolonged battle with prostate cancer.\u00a0 It was later revealed that a combination of his bout with cancer and a series of personal losses triggered a fatal cascade of the symptoms of the \u201cclinical depression he had been plagued with since he was a toddler\u201d (as reported by <\/span>Guitar Player<\/span><\/i> magazine).\u00a0 We last discussed Ronnie Montrose in this space in 2017 (FTV:\u00a0 Montrose, 8-9-17 to be precise).\u00a0 When <\/span>Classic Rock <\/span><\/i>magazine celebrated their 300th issue in the summer of 2022, they sent along a companion Exclusive Edition called <\/span>The Very Best of Classic Rock <\/span><\/i>featuring thirteen past interviews.\u00a0 The piece about Montrose (<\/span>The Search for Ronnie Montrose<\/span><\/i> by Jaan Uhelszki) had appeared in issue #170 which tragically went to press just days before he died.\u00a0 While we already knew he had a complicated personality, it was nice to find Uhelszki\u2019s deep profile filling in the gaps that most casual Montrose fans (like myself) may not have known.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One of the lasting impressions of Ronnie Montrose has been along the lines of, \u201cHe was difficult to work with.\u201d\u00a0 Interviews with his former band members seem to dispel this notion.\u00a0 As one of his oldest friends, bass player Bill Church, recalled, \u201cWe got along great, are you kidding [about the \u2018hard to work with\u2019 label]?\u00a0 On the personal side of things, he and I were a lot alike,\u00a0 We became great fishing buddies.\u00a0 We would bring our acoustic guitars and go up to Eagle Lake, places like that to fish.\u00a0 But Ronnie and Mojo Collins – the so-called star of Sawbuck, their songwriter and lead singer – they hated each other.\u00a0 So that was friction. \u00a0 That was the start of that pattern.\u201d\u00a0 So insight number one:\u00a0 from his earliest band (Sawbuck) onward, Montrose developed a lifelong habit of not getting along with singers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Though he was born in San Francisco, his family relocated to Denver, Colorado when he was two.\u00a0 Montrose did not pick up a guitar until he was 17 and as a self-taught player, it took a while for him to gain skilled and confidence in his playing.\u00a0 The Bay area drew him back and, at the age of 20, Ronnie landed there during the Summer of Love.\u00a0 Call it luck, or an inborn musicological ESP, or a form of built in GPS, Montrose had a knack for being in the right place at the right time.\u00a0 He rented an apartment in an old Victorian house called Thin Blue.\u00a0 Thin Blue turned out to be an epicenter of San Fran\u2019s music scene.\u00a0 Not only was Ronnie\u2019s first band Sawbuck housed there, but it was frequented by other bands.\u00a0 Buddy Miles brought Jimi Hendrix around to Thin Blue the night the Band Of Gypsies played the Fillmore.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0If not luck, it certainly was serendipity at work when Montrose happened to be doing carpentry work for the fabled rock impresario Bill Graham to maks ends meet.\u00a0 He was building a partition between Graham\u2019s and producer David Rubinson\u2019s offices.\u00a0 While he was working there, Ronnie learned Van Morrison was auditioning guitar players.\u00a0 Montrose recalled, \u201cI didn\u2019t have total confidence in my guitar playing then.\u00a0 Not at all.\u00a0 But I went to audition.\u00a0 How could I not?\u00a0 This was Van Morrison.\u00a0 <\/span>Gloria <\/span><\/i>Van Morrison.\u00a0 Them, Van Morrison.\u00a0 There were probably 10 guitar players out there and they all had their little amps and their guitars and they were sitting in chairs out in front of the Lion\u2019s Share where the audience would sit.\u00a0 He called us up one at a time.\u00a0 It was the weirdest thing but even before he called me I knew I had the job.\u00a0 Because I knew I belonged there, and it was like this supernatural thing.\u00a0 From the minute he asked me where I was from and I said \u2018Denver, Colorado\u2019, I knew I had the job.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It might have been his playing or just his geographic background at play here.\u00a0 Morrison called J.Geils Band singer Peter Wolf shortly after and told him, \u201cWolf, I got myself a cowboy.\u201d\u00a0 Turns out Van had a thing about the west and cowboys (who knew?).\u00a0 Montrose got the gig as soon as Morrison found out his roots were in Colorado, but it worked out okay.\u00a0 That is, until the \u2018friction with the lead singer\u2019 thing set in again.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Everything came to a head one night during a performance at UCLA\u2019s Pauley Pavilion.\u00a0 Church recalled he and Montrose decided to step out to the front of the stage instead of hanging in the back and one did not do that in Morrison\u2019s band.\u00a0 Van let Church off the hook as he was on painkillers due to an eye injury, but not Ronnie.\u00a0 Back on the bus, Morrison famously told his guitar player, \u201cRonnie, one of us has to get off the bus,\u201d and he certainly wasn\u2019t volunteering to leave his own band.\u00a0 There was also a rumor that Morrison\u2019s wife, Janet Planet, had taken a shine to Ronnie, so that certainly didn\u2019t help matters.\u00a0 On the plus side, Ted Templeman, the producer for Morrison\u2019s <\/span>Tupelo Honey<\/span><\/i> album, told Montrose to give him a call if he wanted to do something on his own – an offer that Ronnie tucked away for the future.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Montrose landed on his feet when Bill Graham hooked him up with the Edgar Winter Group.\u00a0 Ronnie joined up with Winter\u2019s band just in time to record his breakthrough LP <\/span>They Only Come Out At Night.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 Ronnie\u2019s guitar work on the massively successful hit singles from the same album, <\/span>Frankenstein <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Free Ride, <\/span><\/i>helped send them bounding up the record charts.\u00a0 Much of the fabled \u2018Montrose sound\u2019 can be heard coming out in his work with The Edgar Winter Group:\u00a0 \u201cHe [Edgar] so much wanted to do that whole rock thing that he encouraged me,\u201d Montrose confessed.\u00a0 \u201cIt was the most exponential jump I made [in my playing], and I had to do it.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to call it a struggle.\u00a0 It was a sense of need, that I needed to survive this gauntlet that had been dropped.\u00a0 For me it literally was sink or swim – I was in the Edgar Winter Group and I had better start delivering this heavy guitar music.\u201d\u00a0 A shout out from the audience at a gig in Pittsburgh (\u201cPlay some vibrato, man!\u201d) was another watershed moment – it had not occurred to Ronnie to employ the technique before this random comment was made.\u00a0 From that point on it was added to his \u2018sound\u2019 and is still noted as one of his strongest guitar tricks.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Montrose had ambitions beyond being a sideman in Winter\u2019s jazz-funk-fusion band and soon he could see it was time to move on.\u00a0 As Ronnie recalled, \u201cEdgar used to say to me:\u00a0 \u2018Ronnie, I\u2019m just trying to do my thing and then you always take me somewhere else.\u201d\u00a0 Church remembers how the lead singer friction thing arose in the EWG:\u00a0 \u201cI used to fly out to see Ronnie and [drummer] Chuck Ruff, who was my oldest friend.\u00a0 They were both in Edgar\u2019s band.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know really at first what he was up to, but he was plotting leaving Edgar\u2019s band because, of course, he and Edgar hated each other.\u201d\u00a0 How could Church tell there were problems?\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ll never forget how he pried open his gold record for <\/span>They Only Come Out At Night<\/span><\/i> and took a little Exacto knife and cut out the little picture of Edgar\u2019s face – you know, they put a little album picture on the gold record – and then hung it on the wall that way.\u201d\u00a0 When Montrose finally told Church he was leaving, Bill asked, \u201cYou have the biggest album in the world and you\u2019re leaving?\u00a0 Are you nuts?\u201d\u00a0 Montrose replied, \u201cYep, and if I\u2019ve got the guts to do that, then you have the guts to leave Van\u201d (Morrison, who Church was still playing with).\u00a0 Montrose left another lead singer in his wake but managed to secure Church as the bass player in his next project (although he did put Bill through the ringer before giving him the gig).<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Being back on the west coast paid immediate dividends for the next project which would simply be called Montrose.\u00a0 Reconnecting with Templeman, Ted suggested he hook up with Sammy Hagar who was working with an R&B band at the Fillmore.\u00a0 The two seemed to connect in the writing department though Ronnie would not let Hagar play guitar on stage.\u00a0 They brought Church into the band, but oddly, Montrose made him sit through dozens of auditions of other bass players before offering him the gig.\u00a0 Hagar lobbied heavily for Bill as he was a \u2018friend and known quantity\u2019 but Ronnie still left him hanging before solidifying the line up along with drummer Denny Carmassi.\u00a0 Their debut album (<\/span>Montrose – <\/span><\/i>1973) featured perennial classic rock favorites like <\/span>Rock the Nation, Bad Motor Scooter, Space Station #5, Good Rockin\u2019 Tonight, <\/span><\/i>and<\/span> Rock Candy.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>Even though he was uncerimmonally tossed from the band in 1975, Hagar continues to perform <\/span>Bad Motor Scooter <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Rock Candy<\/span><\/i> in his live shows to this day.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Hagar bears no malice toward Montrose but he is still perplexed why they didn\u2019t become the next Led Zeppelin.\u00a0 Recalling the ordeal bassist Church was put through, Hagar says, \u201cNobody even asked why, because Ronnie was becoming quiet.\u00a0 We all feared him because we knew he was wacky and we didn\u2019t know who would be next, and nobody wanted to get fired because that was our meal ticket, number one.\u00a0 Number two, we all believed in the band.\u201d\u00a0 Sammy looks back today and sees Montrose as being his proving ground:\u00a0 \u201cThe biggest lessons I learned was how to perform.\u00a0 I learned how to go out on tour,\u00a0 I learned how to make a record.\u00a0 I learned how to write songs, and I learned how to deal with a major producer like Ted Templeman.\u00a0 We had Dee Anthony, one of the biggest managers, so I learned from him.\u00a0 I learned everything but I really learned a lot about playing guitar from Ronnie.\u00a0 He was my first real guitar teacher because he didn\u2019t allow me to play guitar in the band so I just watched him every night,\u00a0 And I\u2019d go back to my room and I had my little Les Paul in there.\u00a0 I learned how to play heavy metal guitar from Ronnie Montrose.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The \u2018guitarist hates singer\u2019 thing did not escape Hagar.\u00a0 Ronnie started to come undone at the seams when Sammy began attracting attention.\u00a0 At one point, their manager told Hagar, \u201cYoung man, you\u2019re going to be a star,\u201d in front of Montrose.\u00a0 Small things became big things and all of a sudden, Ronnie is telling Sammy “Don’t run around on stage so much.\u00a0 Don\u2019t come to my side of the stage.\u201d\u00a0 After a gig in Belgium where a local magazine had heaped praise on Sammy, they headed to the next two night stand at the Olympia Theatre in Paris.\u00a0 Hagar had contracted food poisoning from some bad mussels in Belgium and was in the backseat sick as a dog.\u00a0 Ronnie took that moment to lean over the front seat and tell him, \u201cAfter tonight, I\u2019m quitting the band.\u00a0 What are you gonna do?\u201d\u00a0 Hagar\u2019s response cut through the tension that surrounded Ronnie\u2019s announcement:\u00a0 \u201cAfter I finish puking I\u2019m gonna go start a new band.\u00a0 What the (expletive deleted) you think I\u2019m gonna do?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Caramassi now sees the direction both musicians would end up following:\u00a0 \u201cI think Sam would have loved to have stayed with that band,\u00a0 He talks about it to me all the time.\u00a0 We could have been huge, as big as Aerosmith, but it was Ronnie.\u00a0 Just look at his career.\u00a0 Look at what he has done.\u00a0 I mean, look how many bands he\u2019s had.\u00a0 And each one ends up the same,\u00a0 He\u2019s got a history of doing that.\u00a0 There\u2019s a pattern there.\u00a0 You know something else?\u00a0 Ronnie is brilliant, man.\u00a0 I\u2019ve played with a lot of guitar players, a lot of guys with big reputations, and Ronnie is as good as anybody I\u2019ve ever played with.\u00a0 In a lot of respects, better.\u00a0 He\u2019s just got it.\u00a0 I played with Covedale – Page and Ronnie was right up there with Page,\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t take a back seat to anybody.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0According to Hagar,\u00a0 breaking up Montrose did him a favor:\u00a0 \u201cIt threw me out on my own and made me do what I\u2019ve done.\u00a0 I could still be in that band.\u00a0 We could be Aerosmith right now.\u00a0 Which wouldn\u2019t be a bad thing, just that we\u2019d be unhappy,\u00a0 I\u2019d be an alcoholic, would have been in rehab with drugs over and over again, probably.\u00a0 And probably wouldn\u2019t be as rich and famous as I am.\u201d\u00a0 Hagar might be talking a little tongue-in-cheek here, but the others who went through various incarnations of Montrose all agree – it was Ronnie who undid it all.\u00a0 They still joke that, \u201cAfter Ronnie fired everyone from the band – he fired himself.\u201d\u00a0 Church says, \u201cYou are probably wondering why I suffered all that?\u00a0 Because at that time Ronnie was the best guitar player in San Francisco.\u00a0 And that was good enough for me.\u00a0 Still is.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When Jaan Uhelszki finally tracked Montrose down for what would prove to be his last interview, she was surprised how negatively he talked about the first Montrose album.\u00a0 She knew it would be a difficult session when Ronnie told her, \u201cAs I was driving in I thought:\u00a0 \u2018I have two stories;\u00a0 I have my life story and my music story.\u2019\u00a0 My life story is something that is so off-the-wall that I can\u2019t share.\u00a0 But my music story is something I thought might be really interesting, to hear everything that happened to me and from my earliest years, which is not something I want to give up,\u201d\u00a0 Hagar had warned her that Montrose would be a hard nut to crack and Ronnie summed it all up, saying, \u201cMy story is the real story.\u00a0 My name is Ronnie Montrose.\u00a0 The band is called Montrose, and all these other guys that were in this band are peripherals to the real true story.\u201d\u00a0 One wonders if his middle name should have been \u2018Ego\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0With Montrose the man and the band both deceased, we may never know why he always talked smack about the music on the first album or why he blew up a great band.\u00a0 Go back and listen to <\/span>Tupelo Honey, The Only Come Out At Night, <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Montrose.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 These albums are the template of the heavy metal rock albums that would follow.\u00a0 It is a shame that Ronnie couldn\u2019t see for himself the legacy he created.\u00a0 RIP Ronnie, you are gone but your music lives on.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 The classic Sammy Hagar fronted Montrose from 1974 with BAD MOTOR SCOOTER<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0If you are old enough to remember Johnny Carson\u2019s \u2018Carnac the Magnificent\u2019, you can skip the explanation.\u00a0 Carson, decked out with his cape and oversized headgear as Carnac, would hold a sealed envelope to his forehead and predict the answer to the question posed on a slip of paper inside.\u00a0 For example, Carnac would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bands-musicians","category-from-the-vaults","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2626"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2629,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2626\/revisions\/2629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}