FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1998 All Rights Reserved.
| MUSIC Billy Cowsill with Beautiful Joe and Jake Mathews Being 21 years old, having a string of hit singles trailing behind you like toilet paper on your shoe, and just wanting to kick out the jams - sounds like heaven among the music industry's boulevard of broken dreams, don't it? Now imagine being '60s mini-icon Billy Cowsill, still with the million-selling number one single "Hair," still wanting to rock, but with your mother and kid sister tied to your band like a noose around your neck. And, because you're playing Las Vegas next door to Wayne Newton, you're just as likely to kick out the hams. "We were playing at the Flamingo Hotel and I hated Las Vegas. I didn't like the schmaltzy show biz thing. I didn't care for the glitz. I was 21, and I was feeling very uncool that my mother and sister were in the band," recalls Cowsill, now an interesting and well-lived looking 50-year-old. "I just had enough of power pop music; I wanted to play some serious rock 'n' roll and learn more about rhythm and blues music." The young idol ditched his band, The Cowsills, vehicle for the hits "Indian Lake" and "The Rain, the Park, and Other Things" as well as "Hair," and hung out in LA with shadow to the stars Harry Nilsson (of "Without You" fame), learning the tricks of the production trade. One thing led to another and Leon Russell's sidemen eventually cajoled him to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where on the surface it sounded as if he was doing anything but living out his rock-fueled dreams. "I had a pregnant wife, two Irish setters and a Rambler with four cylinders," Cowsill recants, "but I was playing with J.J. Cale every night for all the whisky I could drink and $10, so I went from mega to minor, but I was fulfilling a musical odyssey, and the odyssey was awesome." Mom and sis may have forgiven Cowsill for ditching them, but to this day his philosophy on music remains that it is not a family affair. "I've always cheered young musicians, young attitudes, bad attitudes, because that's what keeps music alive. The more parents tell kids to turn their music down, I think the louder they should play it." To that end, when Cowsill appears at the Palliser for a three-night stand, he'll be accompanied by Calgary young guns Beautiful Joe, his so-called outboard band. And even though he'll honor his past with versions of his hits so in demand among boomers and the new hippie youth of today, he prefers to deliver the goods he learned in LA, Tulsa and elsewhere along his 30-year career, which includes songs from his short-lived country band The Blue Shadows. "There's a snarly rhythm and blues kind of angst to what I do, even if I'm doing something sweet. Because my audience tends to be retro, I cover mostly dead guys - Elvis, Buddy Holly," she says. "In fact, I've just incorporated Tammy Wynette's 'Stand By Your Man' into my set - fresh off the slab." |