"It was a very exciting time,
being in Los Angeles and making an
album. And then we had such a successful
single. We thought we were knocking on
the door of the 'big time'. Sadly, no
one ever answered." 1
Alan Schick played with
some top flight acts such as The Deverons and
The Luvin' Kind prior to joining The Mongrels
in 1969. He took over for Joey Gregorash
who had left to host CJAY's Young As You Are
television show. With The Mongrels, Alan
recorded Do You Know Your Mother and the
link to his future band members for Lucy,
Lucy, Lucy was established in the relationship
with Duncan Wilson, one of the founders of The
Mongrels.
When Merry-Go-Round
called it quits in the summer of 1972, Vance
joined a group called SO
FINE. By the end of
the year, the original guitar and bass players
had been replaced with Duncan Wilson and
Melvyn Ksionzek, respectively. About
this time, the bands Vance was playing in
begin to overlap for approximately an 18-month
period. So Fine, St. Silver, Papa Pluto
… depending on who was fronting the band
determined under which name they were
playing. While working with Aileen, they
were So Fine; with Alan, they became St.
Silver.
Lorne Saifer had
managed The Mongrels and by 1972, he landed a
job as a record executive in Los
Angeles. He continued to maintain his
ties with Winnipeg, and offered Alan a
recording contract with MCA. At the time
the offer came in, Alan was not actively
performing and did not have a band behind
him. So Fine - or the nucleus of So Fine
- was the perfect solution. Their name
was changed to St. Silver and they added Fred
Redekop on piano.
Vance remarried in
February 1973, this time to Bev Kurz, the girl
he had met during his Brother days. As
is so often the case with musicians, the line
between business and pleasure frequently
blurs, and their honeymoon was combined with
the trip to Los Angeles for Vance to record
with Alan. For several members, it was
their first look at American freeways, and
Melvyn was persuaded to be the driver for many
outings. He really didn't have much of a
choice … you had to be 21 to rent a car in
California, and of the six, Vance didn’t
drive, his new wife Bev, was only 20, Fred was
still weeks away from his 21st birthday, and
Duncan was usually “under the
influence”. Alan was tied up most days
with the business end of things. On one
of the band’s first site seeing excursions,
Melvyn was heard to proclaim that it was going
to take two people to drive the vehicle - one
to watch the traffic, and the other to provide
navigational clues.
The band spent three
weeks in Los Angeles finishing the album amid
daily reports of casualties attributed to a
freeway sniper wreaking havoc in southern
California. They
returned to Winnipeg and continued playing
locally, awaiting the first release. Alan
made a second trip back to LA a few weeks
after the first sessions to do some cleanup
on the vocals, causing unfounded rumours to
circulate that no vocal tracks at all were
recorded during the February session.
When Lucy, Lucy, Lucy
hit the air waves in the summer of 1973, it
did extremely well, especially in western
Canada. By December 29, 1973, it was
number 5 on the charts, ahead of John Lennon,
Led Zeppelin, and Wings.
The second single
released was Summer Song b/w Soup Deep.
Winnipeg-based agents,
Frank Wiener and Jerry Kolt, were clamouring
to put together a tour of the western
provinces. But after two unfortunate
incidents on the road, Alan became quite
adverse to travel. In Dryden, a pulp and
paper community in southern Ontario, the
stench from the mill was so over-powering that
Alan immediately became ill and the show had
to be cancelled. A job in Saskatchewan
took a turn for the worse when the owner of
the club didn't like Fred going into his
juggling act, and used that as an excuse to
fire the band.
His reluctance to go on
the road was a contributing factor to St.
Silver gradually receiving higher billing when
performing with Alan. About midway
through 1973, the group began picking up more
and more club dates under the name of St.
Silver on the weeks when Alan wasn't
booked. By early 1974, the band had
developed a very strong following for their
own shows, with Fred taking over on lead
vocals.
Alan retired from the
music industry and went into the clothing
business operating Tyrone Men's Wear in the
then-trendy Osborne Village area of Winnipeg
at 452 River Avenue, from March 1974 through
to June of 1979. Concurrently, he
created and ran Lucy, Lucy, Lucy Productions,
later changing its name to Lucy's Musical
Productions. Throughout much of 1975,
Alan acted as an intermediary between musical
acts and industry executives in an effort to
help emerging artists get their foot in the
door. When he ceased operations at
Tyrone, he moved into a 20-year career with
Freed & Freed International as the
national sales and merchandising
manager. In the early 2000s, Alan
switched professions yet again, relocating to
Toronto, and obtaining his real estate
license. From 2006 until his passing on
October 11, 2016, Alan was a successful agent
for Bosley Real Estate Ltd., and then finally
Sutton Group Associates Realty.
Alan
Schick Photo
credit: Hans Sipma
Alan,
during his Mongrels days
1969
Alan
on the back cover of the
Lucy, Lucy, Lucy album 1973
Tailor
Pino Oppedisano with Alan in
Tyrone Men's Wear April 14, 1979
ALAN
SCHICK MUSIC LIBRARY IMPORTANT: Please
stop one audio recording
before starting another
or you will have both
playing at the same time.
Lucy,
Lucy, Lucy - was
written about one of Alan's high school
friends ... Lucy Giesbrecht.
LUCY, LUCY, LUCY
My
Love and I was the supposed
to be the first single off the album,
but Doc Steen, a Winnipeg DJ with CFRW,
with took a liking to the B side and
that became the hit due to his extensive
air play.
MY LOVE AND I
Summer
Song was the second single
released from the album.
SUMMER SONG
Soul
Deep was the B side of
Summer Song.
SOUL DEEP
Vance
played bongos on Shoot Em' Down
and the first recorded instance of Bev
singing is during the refrain "Oh
Dianne" towards the close of Dianne,
along with the rest of the band.
SHOOT 'EM DOWN /
DIANNE
Western
Arrow is still Vance's
favourite tune from this album.
ALAN
SCHICK
