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The fat paperback is The Book of Golden Discs, and Billy Cowsill is staring intently at the photo of his 19-year-old self standing next to his sister, mother, and three brothers, all of them waving cheerfully from a balcony.
“Immortalized,” he comments dryly.
In the summer of 1967, the Cowsills came as a welcome relief to Middle American parents who worried about their kids being corrupted by acid rock and hippies. Here were four clean-cut boys, Billy, Bob, Barry and John; a cute little girl, Susan; and their “mii-mom”, Barbara, who watched over them all. A family who sang together, nice harmless pop songs about summer vacations and love and fun. Generation gap? Never. The Cowsills were perfect.
Billy is now a member of Blue Northern, the popular Vancouver band that has just released its firt EP record. But when he talks about his days of a teen idol, there’s a lot of mixed feelings about the experience.
“The music they were laying on us, I didn’t like at all. It wasn’t my idea of rock and roll. I wanted to be the Beatles, instead of doing all this cheesy bubblegum.
“But see, I’m a cynic. I had personal problems that affected me. But overall, yeah, it was fun. It was a gas. We were young, and we had fun.”
The Cowsills were dismissed by many as a record company creation, like the Monkees, but they had a fair amount of musical experience. All of the family had been playing for fun for a long time, but the four boys played professionally as a bar band – aged, respectively, 15, 14, nine and seven (we got some weird looks”). With Susan and Barbara added, the Cowsills were signed to three different record companies before they hit it big with The Rain, The Park and Other Things in 1967.
“The winter before we made it, we were chopping up furniture for firewood. But it was all very humorous-minded, it wasn’t anything heavy. Mom got a bit shook, but then moms always do. At the beginning of that summer we got on a bus and at the end of the summer we were at the other end of the country and our record was number one. I don’t know how it happened.”
In 1968 the Cowsills made Indian Lake, which reached number 10 in the U.S. Charts, but their biggest seller was their version of Hair, released in 1969. “It was our first self-contained single,” Billy says. “Me and Bob arranged it and produced it. I’m still proud of it – that’s a fifteen-year-old playing bass and a fourteen-year-old playing drums on that record.”
The song was chosen to accompany the Cowsills’ appearance on a television special, against the wishes of the group’s producer, Wes Farrell (who was later involved with The Partridge Family TV show). He preferred bubblegum music. “He said, ‘You think you can do better?’ “, Billy relates, “and I said, ‘Wes, I can out-sell you two to one. So I had to come through.”
The record was released only after a Cleveland radio station played a test pressing on the air to favorable response. “They (the record company) said the song would ruin our image.” It sold 2.5 million copies.
Billy quit the band in 1969 “after we played Las Vegas.”
“I was a middle-aged teenager. I was missing out on all the things kids do. It was really embarrassing, being 19 and trying to pick someone up with your mom hanging over your shoulder. And we were supposed to be all sweet and clean. I was really dejected and down.”
Billy “troubadoured around” and worked as a producer at RCA Records. He and his girlfriend came to Vancouver two years ago from Austin, Texas. “I grew up on the East Coast and I wanted to be near the ocean again. I came up here, I heart the band, liked what they were doing, so I started sitting in with them. And it kind of went on from there.” Billy sings and plays guitar with the group, and, naturally enough, he produced the EP.
As for the other Cowsills, they still work as session musicians and singers. “They haven’t had to take day jobs,” Billy jokes. The four youngest are currently recording an album; Barbara is a grandmother; and Bobby, besides his session work, is a singing waiter in Hollywood.
And if you want to feel really old, consider that cute little Susan is now 22. Billy predicts a great future for her: “Look out, Carly Simon.”
As for himself, he seems content with his life in Vancouver and his work with Blue Northern. “It’s still a gas,” he says. “And I hope it always will be.”
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