My starting point in music began when I was eleven years old. A failed fourth grade clarinet player, I tortured my neighbors by standing in the yard and blowing so hard into the reed that it made a horrible dying duck sound. I was too hyper to sit still long enough and learn to play properly. What I needed to do was jump around while I played. Pete Fountain's Bourbon Street was a clarinet record that demonstrated you could play the instrument and swing back and forth at the same time. It was not enough. I wanted to dance and play with the instrument at the same time.

On February 9, 1964, I watched a black and white TV, peeling oranges and wearing my Davy Crocket pajamas.  Ed Sullivan said, "It gives me great pleasure to present these exciting young men from England. Ladies and gentleman, the Beatles!" John, Paul, George, and Ringo appeared on the screen and sang All My Loving, Till There Was You, She Loves You, I Saw Her Standing There, and I Want To Hold Your Hand. My excitement grew with each song. My future unfolded. The clarinet was replaced with the closest instrument to a guitar my parents would afford-a $5 ukulele. The rest was up to me: a black wig from my mom sufficed for Beatle-like hair, and a carrot tied to a broomstick handle worked for an imaginary microphone. A mirror told me everything I else needed to know: I was a pubescent dreamer with an acute fear of being ordinary.

I began my first foray into the rock-n-roll biz, as a scrawny, 15-year old Acid Head, who thought hanging out backstage was the coolest thing on Earth. Backstage was the universal music school of business. It was a place where you learned what was really going on behind the scenes of show business. For example, who got stage fright? Where was the best place to perform? Who paid the most? Who was the best record company? Who was looking for a new lead singer? And, who was the best manager?

My first experience was working as a roadie for my brother's rock band, Marvin's Theory. It was like the song by Jackson Browne, The Load Out. As a roadie, I set up and tore down band equipment. One show at a time, I familiarized myself with how to set the microphone and amplifier levels without creating a piercing squeal. I eventually became trusted at the sound mixer, and hands no longer covered their ears when I said, "Testing 1-2-3."

During the summer of 1968, Marvin's Theory played Girl Scout camps. Like watching the Beatles, the girls screamed affectionately at the band. I carried the guitars and the girls screamed at me, too. To me, my geek brother was a rock star, I figured if it could happen to him, it could happen to me. The following summer, in an American basement, I crafted my destiny. I taught myself to play bass, guitar, organ, and drums parts to popular songs like Wipeout, Pipeline, Hang On Sloppy, and Gimme Some Lovin' (Beatles' songs were too hard to play). Finally, I could jump around and play at the same time.

In 1969, one of Minnesota's first music business entrepreneurs, Patrick Raines (manager of Al Jarreau and Aimee Mann) gave me a roadie job and, until I couldn't count the change back correctly, I also sold pop, checked coats, and took door fees. I was helping to build a dance hall in Burnsville, Minnesota called the Prison. The Prison became a hot spot for regional, local, and national bands. It was a place where bands, such as Three Dog Night, broke ground for successful national careers. The business looked easy from my vantage point-the venue was magically sold out. When the show was over the band got a small percentage of the door money. Raines however, walked out with big bags of cash for doing nothing more than throwing a party. The Prison also proved to be my first job at A&R (a music talent scout). Not all bands were sure to draw a crowd so it was also my job to listen to their record or demo tape and decide if they should be hired.

My last job at the Prison dance hall ended in 1970 on a hot July day. Raines took his promoter ambitions a step further when he rented the football field-sized Parade Stadium and hired twenty national bands. It was my first rock festival. Frisbees, beer, other substances, and a long line-up of great bands kept the 10,000 concertgoers happy. It's a Beautiful Day had finished a great set, and I was told that the last act of the evening was driving a farm tractor across the field towards the stage. A longhaired, super hippie guy waved to the crowd. "Who's that?" I asked Raines "That's Shawn Phillips. Go over there and make sure he doesn't fall when he steps down from that tractor." I was too star-struck to talk to Phillips so I just pointed to an anvil microphone case for him to step down on to. He laughed in a deep Texan drawl, jumped down from the tractor like it was a horse to the ground. "Much obliged," he nodded. The crowd burst into a cheer as he walked past me on to the stage. Busy running errands for the promoter, I only caught bits and pieces of Phillips' mystical-like songs Spaceman and Woman. Those songs and others got airplay on the local radio station KQRS, and they stuck in my head. My friends considered Philips the Dalai Lama of rock. An introduction to your Phillips' album could be leveraged for romance. During the early morning hours, I remembered hearing Second Contribution coming from a bedroom.

But I did not become an instant fan. Philip's concert ended an hour and a half later. The crowd applauded and stomped a demand for an encore. Phillips took a long bow and told Minneapolis how much he loved them. That was the last time I saw him. Like a young boy attached to the excitement of a traveling circus, I had run away from a broken home, dropped out of school, and pursued the calling of my soul to be in rock-n-roll. I finished the summer of 1970 working as a stage hand for two outdoor rock festivals: Poynette and Stevens Pointe, Wisconsin. I spent my time fulfilling the personal requirements of contract riders. I served sitar master Ravi Shankar hot tea. He noticed my three-day unwashed body and dilated pupils and, smiling, kindly shook his head. I guided Buffy Sainte-Marie up the steep stage stairs and nearly dropped her and her guitar. I spilled a glass of water on Ted Nugent's guitar amps power box. Ending the three-day music festival, he was cool, asking the crowd to build a windmill for a never-ending power source and a never-ending rock festival.

Woodstock was my last outdoor music festival. My destination at Woodstock was the star tent, and it wasn't too difficult to get past the stoned backstage security to hang out there. Most of the crew were either too wrecked or exhausted to notice a mud-clad 16-year old stumbling around trying to build his vision of working in the music business. In front of the stage, a sound-mixing riser rose out of the mud above a sea of people. To protect it from rain, the equipment was covered by a makeshift tarp. Beneath the tarp, a person with thick sideburns, glasses, and wearing an Australian-like outback hat was desperately tried to control the direction of the music. I didn't know it at the time but working the controls was not Crocodile Dundee, it was my future South African host, David Marks.

I followed live music throughout the 70s by mostly sneaking into a famous nightclub in Downtown Minneapolis called the Depot, later renamed First Avenue. If those were my acts performing at the club, (I tried to think like a music businessperson,) I would need to know how you could get in without paying. I solved the problem. One guy would get a ticket, go upstairs to the bathroom and open the window. Then I would climb up on the marquee sign and slip into the bathroom window. Until the drinking age was dropped to 18 years old, I was underage and I didn't have the money for a ticket. It was by this means that I saw most of the greats on tour. From the Stooges to Joe Cocker, it would be an exercise in name-dropping. (Name-dropping is an accepted form of bull shit in the rock world. I don't believe that half the people I met in the industry actually knew half the artists they claimed to know, but no called you on it.) I think almost every group on their way up or down performed at the club, including Shawn Phillips (on his way down). I kept my scene maker skills up to snuff, and I spent most of my early adult years at the club walking the music biz-walk and talking the music biz-talk.

Disco finally died out by 1977, and a new style of rock music hit the streets called new wave. At first, I didn't understand the raw edge, back to the rock basics of three chords, leather jacket, pale skin, and dyed-hair behind the music style. The energy, the new rebelliousness, and the spirit of the sound hooked me however. The new sound reminded me of that first time I saw the Beatles. If I was to be in the rock music business, I had to keep up with the times.

read the complete
Vitamin Q story

Listen to Arlo sing with his band Vitamin Q. Songs written by Arlo Hennings.

ME MAGAZINE- (3.26 MB) Windows Media Player or Real Audio /recorded 1981

Guitar & Vocals - Arlo Hennngs

Drums - Michael Gacek

Saxophone - Anita Kozan

Keyboards - Mike Pugsley

Bass - John Sundquist

HIGH RISE BABIES - (2.62 MB) Windows Media Player or Real Audio/recorded 1980

Also by Arlo Hennings

the first installment

on being Shawn Phillips' manager

Meanwhile, I had to earn living. Long before there were music business and recording schools, I faced the proposition of whatever State funded educational programs were available to a financially challenged person. My first choice was a voc-tech diploma in Dental Technology. After my two-month career in tooth-carving predictably failed, I was sentenced to another attempt at making me a responsible taxpayer. My next voc-tech diploma came from a school for secretaries, and I graduated. Since I couldn't find a job that someone would actually pay me a regular salary, I wound up in a hated straight commission life insurance sales job. The only thing that kept my sanity as I was being chased off the property of prospects by attack dogs was my calling in music. Don't get me wrong working on a straight commission basis in the life insurance business was a perfectly legitimate means to earn a living. If I had been a Zen master however, I probably could have harmonized on how to be a punk rocker by night and Mutual of Omaha's Marlin Perkins by day. Selling insurance taught me invaluable skills: how to sell intellectual real estate, how to make a cold call, and how not to be afraid of club owners with gnarly teeth. I was 25 years old and, due to work-related travel, was cut off from the music scene.

The decision to quit the death-planning business, move back into the inner city, and join a rock band happened when I met a talented guitar player named Bruce Allen. He was starting a punk-wave band called the Teet Zee Flies (1978) and asked me to audition for the rhythm guitarist. Before I felt comfortable with the audition, I had to practice and learn more about the new music that they were playing. My family had long gone their separate ways, including my brother and his band's instruments. Therefore, I continued my self-taught guitar instruction by playing on instruments that hung for free on the walls of music stores. When the store manager figured out that I wasn't going to buy anything, and kicked me out, I moved to another store. To get hip to the music, I was aided by my younger artist neighbors, a group of 19 year-old Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) students who turned me on to groups like the Clash, Ramones, Roxy Music, Lou Reed, Elvis Costello, Brian Eno, Talking Heads, Devo, and Blondie. (Much to the embarrassment of my MCAD date one evening, I was invited to watch the premier of an independent new wave film. I shook hands with the white-haired producer from New York and told him that his movie was about as artistic as my big toe. My date blew up and left me there. Looking bewildered as to what I had done wrong, a stranger tapped on my shoulder and informed me that I had just insulted Andy Warhol.) On a borrowed guitar, I passed the audition and joined the Teet Zee Flies. The only problem was I thought that they couldn't play and I left to start another band called Vitamin Q. (The Teet Zee Flies changed their name to The Suburbs and became A&M recording artists. The "Burbs," for short, became one of the most popular groups in Minneapolis, and gave me serious doubts about my talent scouting abilities.)

During Vitamin Q's forgetful five-year run (1979-1985), my band mates argued amongst themselves about what style of music to play for the first three years before finally performing at nightclubs, roadhouses, schools, riverboats, and ballrooms. Vitamin Q's claim to fame came from my song about the 80's Me Generation, Me Magazine. It appeared on the KQRS' radio "Best of the Twin Cities Beat" album and TV show. Vitamin Q was better known for their rehearsal space. Pulling on experience from my Prison Dance Hall days, I helped to transform the group's warehouse rehearsal space into a concert hall that provided free access to original groups. The space became known as "On Broadway" and was the recipient of feature stories that acclaimed the venue as a critical spawning ground for developing talent.

I wanted to be a writer, too. My first self-published chapbook of poetry hit the streets in 1983, entitled, Tomorrow Never Answers. The book was hand distributed to area book and record stores however, it was mostly offered from the stage. The poetry book received a feature write-up in the Reader magazine and finally was sold by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti at his New City Lights bookstore in San Francisco. After Vitamin Q disbanded in 1985, and with the help of producer and future music business partner Marty Weintraub, I recorded a double album and accompanying 40-page story entitled Burden of the Beat - the Eyelid Movie, a libretto, which parodied the idea of wanting to be rock star. The Plains Art Museum in Moorhead, Minnesota offered me a grant to exhibit the multimedia piece. The Forum newspaper in Fargo, North Dakota said the project was "worth seeing and hearing". In addition, the Minneapolis Star and Tribune and the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, nominated the work for their top 10-picks of the year. The Minnesota Historical Society documented the work (AV collection disc #175-A).

Throughout the 1980s, I had collected enough press clippings about my writing and music to verify that I was indeed a legend in my own mind. My income, unfortunately, didn't match the hype-it remained below poverty level. Though I thought I had accepted my financial fate as an "artist," after my band broke up, I thought maybe it was time to try something else. At 31 years old, the business side of the music business became my next calling. In 1985, I joined Mill City record distributors at minimum wage, with no benefits, as a Sales Manager. As a record distributor, I promoted and distributed over 100 independent labels to record stores. I worked at that post for two years until launching my own business: Hennings Multimedia. Working part time as a short order cook at Lyles Bar & Grill, I financed a music company that consisted of an eight-track recording studio, telephone, and a business card.
 

To be continued -

Special editorial thanks goes to Tina Perpich and Suz Croutwater.
In addition, thanks to feedback from John Rouleau.

Copyright 2003 Arlo Hennings. All rights reserved. 
Do not reproduce or copy without the express
permission of the author.

Copyright Shawn Phillips, all right reserved.