Peter Cross By Numbers

Please click here to start the video / movie documentary and interview with Peter Cross about this webpage.

1. drummer for The Dolphins who had the regional hit record "Surfing East Coast," with a follow-up single too which I can't recall just this second
2. drum tracks on Paul Leka's Na Na Hey Hey (toured as Steam, etc.) and drum tracks and vocal arranging work on Steam's follow up single, "Don't Stop Lovin' Me"
3. recording Roller Derby Star with Willy Truckaway at the Mill Valley Heliport
4. The Record Plant with Magic and Gary Kelgren, Chris Stone, Tom Fly and Don Digeralamo
5. Hyde Studio with Mark Needham, Bobby Vega, and Burleigh Drummond
6. Working with Timmy MacDonald, in his home basement studio doing Crossfire Phase I
7. Hollyweird with Eric, Phil, and Dino
8. Finishing everything with Mark Needham and Timmy at Hyde Street

Accounting for Peter Cross' Life in Music

The Dolphins

Grief

The Chains

Steam

Magic

Peter Cross & Crossfire

Notes

"This ain't right!", I sayz to meself.

Then, I say to Peter, "I don't want you to go down in history as a ? mark... when you're a peter +"

"Hmmm... I better work faster!"

So, I asked Peter:
Where the hell are the dolphins?

I've been workin' on the interview... and i think i know the answer to part of it.

Peter -- teaches himself to play drums to the Young Rascals
The Dolphins -- Tor invites Peter to join the group
-- college band with Tor
The Chains -- NYC... Tor, Tor's brother, Peter, and?
Steam -- Tor, Peter Cross, Chris, Don Bosson
Magic -- Peter Cross, Don Bosson
Peter Cross & Crossfire -- Peter Cross, Timmy, Bobby Vega, Burleigh Drummond, Eric, Phil Goff, Dino, Mark Needham

Do ya mind fillin' in the full names, etc... so we have a quasi-complete bio of you and the bands you've played with?

Peter replied:
OK, I'll try

I joined The Dolphins when I was in my senior year in high school. When Tor and I went away to Syracuse University together, we formed another band called Grief, and that's when I met Chris Robison, the keyboard player. When Paul Leka asked us to go out on the road as Steam, I was the one who brought Chis in, and I also brought in Don Bosson because I had played in his band, The Double Exposure for about two weeks before they broke up.

Steam -- Tor Pinney, Peter Cross, Chris Robison, Don Bosson
Magic -- Peter Cross, Don Bosson, David Raeder
Peter Cross & Crossfire -- Peter Cross, Timmy MacDonald (the genius), Bobby Vega, Burleigh Drummond, Eric Morton, Phil Goff, Dino, Mark Needham

I probably played in 50 different bands during my drumming years, and most of them are not worth remembering.

I ask peter about the band he was in when Paul Leka "discovered" them:

You talk about it in the interview... Tor goes through a life change... quits school... moves back to NYC... starts a band with his brother... you go and join up with them.

Peter replied:
The Dolphins broke up when Tor was accepted into Syracuse University, and he had to leave to go up there. Coincidentally, I also was accepted by Syracuse, who was probably accepting anybody who couldn't get accepted anywhere else. Tor and I formed Grief at Syracuse University with Chris Robison (real name Harry Meyer) on keyboards. Tor was married with a wife and baby daughter who were back in Larchmont at the time. Something happened, I forget what, and Tor quit school at Syracuse and went back to Larchmont. When that happened, Grief broke up, and I transferred down to NYU to be with Mona. Then Tor formed The Chains with his brother Roy, and I joined up with them again. It was The Chains who Paul Leka saw playing in a club one night.

I ask:
You and Tor were in The Chains... next Paul happened upon you in a NYC club? asked you to record... so, you, Tor, Don, & Chris recorded?

Am I getting this right? or it wasn't until you toured that Don & Chris came into the picture?

Peter replied:
Exactly. When Paul gave us the opportunity to go out on the road as Steam, and all we had to do was play Na Na and all the rest was our own songs, and collect whatever road money was left after the booking agency, the manager, and Paul took their cuts, we jumped at the chance. Tor and I were the core members, we both agreed on Chris because we were so knocked out by his arranging talent in Grief, and I brought in Don Bosson because he was the best bass player I'd met who could also sing lead vocal at the same time. Don was not a songwriter, but Tor and me and Chris were all writers. I thought that Tor was the best lead vocalist and songwriter, and that Don and me were sort of tied in second place as vocalists. Chris had one or two good songs, but his arranging of harmony vocals was inspirational to me, and I still like listing to his work on the Steam CD. In hindsight, when I listen to the Steam CD (which you may or may not get a copy of - I haven't made my mind up about that one yet), I see that I was in the process of emerging as the best songwriter and vocalist. I would, however, give you an MP3 copy of Don't Stop Lovin' Me and the other piece of Paul Leka crap.

I mention:
One other part that's not clear... you explain how steam ran out of steam... but, i don't think i understand how magic started?

Peter replied:
Steam broke up by mutual agreement and in mutual disgust with the booking agency, the manager, and Paul. We felt that they had all let us down out there on the road, and we ended up fighting with each other constantly because of the miserable conditions they put us through, and the frustration we were feeling because the crowds were loving our original songs, but our management company failed to do anything at all with our stuff.

I go on:
Then, you move to Jamaica for a few weeks... only to want to come back... since you gave up your apartment in NYC, you move to CA?

Peter replied:
After Steam broke up, I decided I wanted to go live in Jamaica where all that incredible reggae music I was hearing came from. After I found out Jamaica was not the paradise I had thought it was, I came back to NYC to find that I had mistakenly given up my apartment at 49 Prince St. in Little Italy - really bad mistake! So after shopping around and realizing that this was ridiculous and what I really wanted was to get the hell out of there and get out to sunny southern California where my uncle Henry and cousin Mustang lived in Laguna Beach, so we (Mona and me) packed up all our stuff and sent it out there, and then hitched a ride with some girl who had a Volkwagen van and was picking up people to share gas. When we reached Oklahoma, the VW van broke down, and we ended up staying with these incredibly friendly people who had a house out on a farm. I have no idea how we did that, but it must have involved mutual smokables. Anyway, one night they took us "across the tracks" into the black neighborhood to hear an all black blues band who turned out to be damned authentic, with a really old bass player, harmonica player, and guitar player, and the bass player's grandson played drums but he was coming down with the flue. So they asked me to sit in because he was about to throw up, and I ended up playing with them for a solid week while we all partied out at the farm while waiting for the local halfwit to fix the VW van. Of course, I refused to take any money for substituting for their drummer, because I was so thrilled to be playing with these old authentic blues men who were totally unknown but good players very cool dudes. A funny thing was that these old guys were so impressed with my playing - they were under the impression that I knew all their songs and they really liked that coming from a white boy, even thought I didn't know any of their songs, and of course didn't tell them that I thought every song they played was incredibly similar - I mean real blues is pretty simple stuff - you just have to know where to begin, keep the steady and solid beat, use some subtle dynamics to vary the steady beat, and then just lay back and let the others play. Only Led Zeppelin can really play the blues with the drummer stepping out front at the very same time as the bass player and guitar player. When anybody else tries to do it, it just comes off as overplaying.

Anyway, after I arrived in Laguna and found my own place, I started auditioning for bands in order to get a job,. and that's when I met Cliff, who I now live with, and I joined Cliff's band Blackfeather. As my influence on the band grew and they started performing some of my songs, one of my songs they liked best was entitled "Magic" (no known existing recording of that one - even Cliff lost his). Some of the band members changed, and then Cliff and I changed the name of the band to Magic, and that was my first Magic, but not the last Magic because I really liked the name and we copyrighted and trademarked it.

I met Eric Morton in Laguna Beach. My cousin Mustang was living at Eric's house with two girlfriend/lovers at the same time. Eventually Eric and I took a trip together up to San Francisco, and I can't remember why we went up there because Eric and I had just rented an incredible house right on Thousand Steps Beach in South Laguna which had originally been built for Bette Davis, and the ceilings were about 5-1/2 feet high so I had to stoop down all the time. But it was worth it because we were only paying $200 a month total between us to live right on the cliff overlooking Thousand Steps Beach (the best one in southern CA) and the Pacific Ocean. So whatever possessed us to go up to SF, I have no idea, but I clearly remember coming up over the east Bay hills horizon on a crystal clear sunny day and seeing the shimmering city of San Francisco with the fog and the entire blue Bay with the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance and being stunned and thinking Oh my God I want to live in this city and I also want to live in South Lagune, so what will I do?

Anyway, somebody introduced us to a recording engineer named Pete Slausen who I think may still have his own recording studio in San Rafael, and he introduced us to Willy Truckaway in Studio B of the Mill Valley Heliport (a heliport pad building that had been gutted out and converted into recording studios and rehearsal studios for San Francisco bands like Hot Tuna, which is where I met Yorma Kaukenen formerly of the Jefferson Airplane in Studio A. And remember I met Yorma again up at Wavy Gravy's camp many years later, and he was the guitar player on stilts, which he actually can do, and he remembered me even though I didn't recognize him at all.)

Anyway, Willy had been contracted by Warner Brothers to record his version of Roller Derby Star by Kent Houseman, and Willy had already found these two killer guitar players named David Lewark and David Raeder, and they were all looking for a drummer/bass player combination. So when Eric and I walked into Studio B with Pete Slausen and we all jammed together for about a day and a night, everbody stoned to the max for every secon, and when the sun rose over the Bay there really was a DOUBLE RAINBOW, and it all just came together and we formed another band called Magic. And that Magic recorded Roller Derby Star with Willy, and THAT is the piece of music I'm most interested in, now that I've resurrected the dead thing and found the most awesome drum track that I ever recorded, plus my arranging and vocal harmony work on a damn fine piece of driving rock and roll.

I ask about the bassist:
And... Don was already out there?

Peter responded:
Much later, to my extreme regret, we all booted out Eric and replaced him with Don Bosson because we thought (mistakenly in hindsight) that Don was a better bass player than Eric and a better singer, and we were wrong on both counts eventually.

So, I ask:
What happened to Tor?

Peter replied:
Tor is Tor, and will always be Tor the Enigma and the Adventuresome One. He is currently traveling around the world again by himself, probably picking up gorgeous women whenever he can attract one who measures up to his standards. Last I heard, he was headed up into Canada in his motor home, and then intending to sell it and buy another sailboat to cruise to the South Pacific and eventually to Australia.

I asked:
do you have any setlists from any of the bands and/or can you remember them? i'd like em typed in email text as well as, jpg's of actual lists ifn' ya have any?

Peter replied:
I don't have any Magic set lists, because all the different Magics had to play in clubs, doing vast numbers of cover songs, and our set lists had like 40-50 songs on them, including my songs. There was one really good Magic tape by the San Francisco version, with me, Don Bosson, David Raeder, David Lewark, and a keyboard player named Pat which was recorded at the Record Plant in Sausalito. And I've searched and searched for that one, and even recently located Tom Fly, the original chief/head Record Plant engineer who worked with the now dead Gary Kelgren to record us. But unfortunately, Tom has no copy of the recordings, and has no idea where there might be any copy. So this one appears to be a dead end. Too bad. There was some really good stuff on it.

Like I told you, I have the Steam CD, which has us doing all our original songs in exactly the same order as we did them on stage, and just before we broke up, after coming back to NYC when the road tour ended, we played live in an attic in Syracuse that belonged to the former lead singer from Grief whose name was Mike something or other, and all he had was a 1/4 track tape recorder with a lousy mic. Of course, Na Na isn't on the CD because we would never have even thought to record it, having beat it to death on the road and all four of us hating the dumb song so much, as I still do. And as I said, I still haven't made up my mind whether or not to give it to you because of it's extremely poor recording quality (bad tape hiss - sounds cutting in and out), and the fact that we had to play live and apparently we weren't as good as I remembered us being, even though the vocal harmonies that Chris arranged are truly remarkable and we did sing them pretty darn well for live. But one of the tracks most of interest to me is the original version of Favorite Toy, with my drumming which is similar to the way I ended up playing it at The Record Plant with Magic. And there are a few of my other songs and Tor's songs that were performed by Steam that I think are worth listening to because the songs themselves are good, especially Tor's "Ring Around the Rainbow" (for his baby daughter), and Tor's "Let Your Love be Free" (a free sex anthem which he almost sold to a country record company, but didn't), and my original version of "Living in a Beehive" is equally as interesting as Favorite Toy, because Beehive turned out so much differently and so much better in the Crossfire version, and a nice medley of one of Chris's songs "The Kerry Dancers" (about a former lifetime in Rennaisance Days as a dancer in a touring group) and my song "Very Special Woman" (written about guess who? ..... Mona, of course), and we always used to end our sets with this medley.

But see, I want to do Roller Derby Star (which to me is simply sensational) and all the other Seminal Songs and Yoga Songs (which to me are so much more interesting) first before I get into deciding whether or not to put the poorly recorded Steam songs anywhere out in public. Understand?

I replied: Yup... quite a bit better. i thought you were talking about the studio album by steam... i didn't understand you meant a cd of the songs the touring steam played

and, then i thought... it was stream recorded live in concert

but, now i get it... you have a cd of the songs often played by steam and other Tor, you, n' chris bands... in concert... that were recorded "live" in an attic

though the recording is important... i'm also interested in just the song titles, writers... and any lyrics... like for "Ring Around the Rainbow"

did you guys write any songs together?