|
The Cowsill family is not the ideal family. So says Barbara Cowsill, 41-year-old mother of the popular singing family.
"One thing I don't like is people looking at us on stage and thinking we're the perfect family," she said. "We aren't. We have our family problems, but we don't show them on stage."
Not Much Different
In their dressing room before performing at the Teenage Fun Fair Sunday at the Exhibition Hall, the Cowsills looked like any family.
Bob, the 19-year-old lead singer and guitarist, walked around barefoot complaining about the poison ivy covering his hands. Ten-year-old Susan played with the family dog, and Paul, 17-years-old, and Barry, 14, teased Susan. Mrs. Cowsill ironed a blouse on a guitar case, and Bud Cowsill, the father, attended to the business matters.
"It all started when Bob and Bill (who is now married and out of the group) started singing at local performances around our old home in Newport, R.I.," Mrs. Cowsill said. "As each of the kids got older and learned an instrument, they would join the group."
Soon word spread to college campuses about the Cowsills, and they played at Eastern colleges. From there they went to network television and finally a recording contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Recordings.
Mrs. Cowsill said one of their most popular recordings, "Hair," was the result of a TV appearance.
"We taped a scene in the show where the kids dressed up in leather outfits and wore wigs of obnoxiously long hair," she said. "It was strictly a put-on. Bob and Bill wrote the arrangement, and when we preformed it, we liked it so much we had to make a single of it," she said.
When the Cowsills informed their agent they wanted to record "Hair," the outcry was long and loud.
"Everyone from our agents to MGM executives said we shouldn't do it and it would ruin our image," Mrs. Cowsill said. "My husband said we didn't care about our image and wanted to do it, and if it failed we'd go down with it. Well, within five weeks it was number one in the nation. We like it best of all the numbers we've done so far."
That the Cowsills didn't care about their image in indicative of the attitude the whole family has toward its popularity.
"We know we won't last forever," Bob said. "We're not saying we'll quit at any set time, but when one or all of us gets tired, we are free to quit. Bill chose to leave, and some said his leaving would be the end of the group. But it seems we always have someone to fill the vacancy.
"We play all kinds of popular music. Any kind of song that lasts is a good song, and I don't think there is any real trend in music now."
Then the Cowsills put on one of their six costumes and waded through a large crowd of fans to the stage. The group that Mrs. Cowsill calls "a family that happens to sing, not singers that happen to be a family" picked up their instruments and started to perform.
|
