IT’S BEEN 50 YEARS OF MUSIC FOR THE GROUP SHA NA NA
Sha Na Na still riding unlikely wave of fame and popularity a half-century later
Back in 1969, when Sha Na Na covered Danny & the Juniors’ 1958 hit “Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay,” the band members couldn’t have known that they might have been singing about themselves.
Back then, the group of Columbia University students was an oddity and a curio. In the era of psychedelic rock and burgeoning FM radio,
nobody expected a group of Ivy Leaguers-turned-greasers to last
15 minutes, much less 50 years. That they would entertain audiences at the first Woodstock Music and Art Fair as well as on worldwide television and movie screens, and in the process sell a few million records … well, that didn’t seem to be in the cards.
Nonetheless, that’s the story of Sha Na Na. A half-century later, with two original members and one all-but-original member still in the lineup, the group is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a new album, “50th Anniversary Commemorative Edition,” and enjoying a lease on performing life that has never ended.
“It’s pretty extraordinary,” said co-founder John “Jocko” Marcellino, speaking by telephone from his home in La Jolla, California. “It’s something that started as
college fun back at Columbia 50 years ago. It’s remarkable that it still has legs and we still rock.”
Many of Sha Na Na’s members started as an a cappella group called the Kingsmen before having to change its name because of the Pacific Northwest band the Kingsmen, best-known for the 1963 hit “Louie Louie.”
The group began to broaden its repertoire to include popular doo-wop and rockabilly songs. It was Leonard’s brother, George, who came up with the concept of recasting the group in the guise of his childhood.
“We went down to the thrift store, because then you could buy a blackleather jacket for $25,” the 69-year-old Marcellino recalled. “We rented costumes from a Broadway costume house from ‘Bye Bye Birdie’ and cut off the sleeves.”
Then there was the hair. “It took a lot of grease before we discovered that K-Y was much easier to use, because it was watersoluble,” Marcellino said with a laugh.
With an undeniably kitschy appeal, 10 songs and choreography, Sha Na Na went from campus to greater Manhattan, where the group took up residence at Steve Paul’s the Scene, a hip hangout that boasted a regular clientele of then-current musicians and movie stars.
“I was 19 years old, meeting all these rock gods coming to see our act. It was amazing,” Marcellino recalled. “(Jimi Hendrix) understood it. He came from the touring R&B bands, the Isley Brothers and that. He knew what was going on.”
It was Hendrix who gave the group its biggest early break, introducing the group’s manager to Woodstock co-producers Michael Lang and Artie Kornfeld, and encouraging them to book the act.
“Our manager, who was a grad student at the time, was talking to them and said, ‘These guys want you to do something called Woodstock,’” Marcellino recalled, “and I said, ‘Go over and tell them yes, we’ll do it,’ because I had been hearing all about it.”
The group was signed for $350 — the check bounced — as well as $1 to appear in the documentary being filmed at the event. Eschewing helicopter transportation from their motel to the Woodstock site — “The pilot’s eyes looked like those little pinwheels cartoon people have when they’re really stoned,” Robert Leonard said — he, Marcellino and manager Ed Goodgold opted to drive and wound up making their way “through all the wasteland and wreckage of the one big soggy mess that the festival area had become.”
For his part, Marcellino acknowledged “enjoying a hallucinogen of some kind, and I decided I wanted to be alone — but, of course, I was in the midst of half a million people. So we wandered up to the top of the hill, me and a couple of buddies, and (Creedence Clearwater Revival) was doing ‘Born on the Bayou’ and there were, like, rings coming off the cymbals that were going over the crowd, and the crowd probably had cigarette lighters and there were candles.
“It was an extraordinary sight,” he said. “I had a groovy experience, like any kid who was there.”
With the festival running hours behind schedule, Sha Na Na didn’t get onstage until sunrise on Monday morning — and even then only after Hendrix intervened to insist that Sha Na Na play when festival organizers thought about scratching the group.
“We didn’t care when we played — we just wanted to play,” Marcellino said. “Jimi and his management team put his foot down, so we got on second-to-last and did 35, 40 minutes before Hendrix, which is amazing. There’s still footage of him grooving on the side, watching our act.”
The 1970 documentary “Woodstock” put some potent rocket fuel behind Sha Na Na’s future, even with only a snippet of the group’s performance of Danny & the Juniors’ 1957 smash “At the Hop.”
“We were almost edited out,” Marcellino said, “but we were getting standing ovations at previews in New York and L.A., so they left it in. We were a little different from everyone else that was in (the film), and I think people liked that.”
In its wake, Sha Na Na began playing larger venues and hosting opening acts that included Alice Cooper and Bruce Springsteen. John Lennon and Yoko Ono invited the group to be part of their “One to One” benefit concert at New York’s Madison Square Garden in 1972.
Sha Na Na also headlined a syndicated television show from 1977 to 1982, with guests such as Chuck Berry, Chubby Checker, Little Richard, the Ramones and the Ronettes, and was seen in the 1978 hit movie “Grease.”
Band members have come and gone through the years, including singer Rob Leonard, who teaches linguistics at Hofstra University, in Uniondale, New York; guitarist Henry Gross, who went on to have his own hit with “Shannon” in 1976; guitarist Elliot Cahn, who became Green Day’s first manager; Alan Cooper, who sang lead on “At the Hop,” has gone on to serve as a provost at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America; singer Jon “Bowzer” Bauman, who replaced Cooper and became the face of the group during its heydey, left in the mid-1980s to form his own group and become active in several political causes; and Joe Witkin and Scott Powell, who both became physicians. The late Frederick “Denny” Green became a law professor and a vice president of Columbia Pictures; Richard Joffe is an attorney; Bruce “Bruno” Clarke is an English professor at Texas Tech University; Dave Garrett manufactured musical amplifiers with Earth Sound Research.
The current Sha Na Na lineup includes Marcellino and fellow co-founder Donny York, along with Screamin’ Scott Simon, who joined in 1970. Marcellino, Simon and York each takes the lead on a new studio track for the “50th Anniversary Commemorative Edition,” backed by the current band. The album is filled out with a dozen previously unreleased live recordings.
Sha Na Na plays about 20 dates a year, Marcellino said, which this year included a return to the Woodstock site in Bethel, New York. Half a century into the band’s history, he said, demand remains higher than he ever could have imagined 50 years ago.
“It’s not just nostalgia, you know? It’s great American music based on blues and rhythm & blues and the doo-wop songbook, the Golden Age of Rock and Roll that everyone knows and loves,’’ Marcellino said.
“I think people expect to come to a Sha Na Na show and have a good time, and I think we deliver.”