Here’s a joke for ya: What do you call a glam rock band coming out of Florida in the early seventies? Deceased. Because as everybody knows Gator Country was Southern Rock territory, the natural-born stomping grounds of the Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Outlaws and a slew of lesser lights. And if there was one thing guaranteed to make the most rearguard redneck fans of said bands (and even the gators wandering around like they owned the place) see red it was a band of limp-wristed fops in platform boots with stars painted on their faces, lowering the region’s nationwide high testosterone levels. Why, that’s the kind of damn fool stunt that could get a fella murderized.
But as impossible as it sounds Florida did produce an honest-to-God glam band in the early Seventies, and nobody killed them! They went by the name White Witch, and the first I heard of them was from a friend whose description of them went, “They were Ziggy Stardust come to Florida.” Well those words were like manna from Heaven to me—I just had to check White Witch out.
And all I can say having heard them is they were far weirder than I could have ever imagined. For the simple reason that they couldn’t decide whether they wanted to be a glam rock band or a boogie band or a metal band or (and I’m not kidding here) a progressive rock band. Not only were they “Ziggy Stardust come to Florida” they were “Styx come to Florida,” and try to wrap that around your frontal lobe if you can. What were these guys doing? Did they not realize they were making your more combative Skynyrd fans shit Confederate battle flags?
Which isn’t to say they didn’t have some redneck in ‘em. Chuck Eddy, who put White Witch’s second and final album, 1974’s A Spiritual Greeting, at No. 266 on his list of the 500 best heavy metal albums in the universe, wrote that lead singer Ronn Goedert possessed “the craziest hickmetal throat this side of Mistah Jim Dandy himself,” and he’s right. A True Son of the South, Ronn Goedert, but it’s what he did with those Dixie tonsils of his, and what the band was doing around him as he was exercising said tonsils, that made all the difference. Cosmic rock wasn’t altogether taboo south of the Mason-Dixon line—just check out Black Oak Arkansas’ epic walk-through-the-halls-of-karma “Mutants of the Monster” if it’s proof you’re looking for.
Oh, and before I go any further I should note that White Witch weren’t “pseudo-Satanists” as Eddy writes, but (just like they say in their name) the GOOD kind of witches, witches in good-guys-wear-tall-white-pointed hats (and no I’m not talking about the Klan) who probably blanched at the sight of a pentagram. Why, they even opened their concerts with the wholesome message, “To bring good where there once was evil, to bring love where there once was hate, to bring wisdom where there once was ignorance; this is the power of White Witch.”
“We’ll All Ride High (Money Bag$)” is a friendly glam metal & western sing-along, with a tough guitar; one minute Goedert sounds like Axl Rose and the next he sounds like somebody completely different delivering the eulogy of some rich Scrooge. He really growls it up, and when he isn’t growling he’s grunting and panting or hitting these impossible high notes that probably bounced off the rings of Saturn. And all to the accompaniment of Buddy Pendergrass’ piano and the hard-as-coffin-nails guitar of fellow Buddy (Richardson in this case).
White Witch opens “Slick Witch” with some bona fide Moog synthesizer (roll over Ronnie Van Zant) and is a top-notch glam metal ranter-and roller that would have done Guns N’ Roses proud. Pendergrass lays some organ on you while Richardson seems to be playing TWO GUITARS at once, although I’m sure it’s just overdubbing. Meanwhile Goedert really screeches it up, and even goes into a groovy proto-Stephen Tyler speed rap that goes something like “Way down in Alabama moving like a slammer/Working for the F.B.I./Hanging like a shirt tail, blowing like a windmill,” after which he commences to really whoop and holler. And he closes things with the lines “Well along came a spider, sat right, right, right down beside her, said ‘ooooo’.” And you have to ask yourself: Is that spider from Mars?
“Walk On” is a laid-back pop number—Pendergrass’s electric piano is perfect Crest smile bright, and Goedert’s vocals are silky smooth; why, he’s so relaxed he throws in some “la la la” and “do do do” and even scat sings towards the end. Great melody, no doubt about it, ditto Richardson’s guitar solo, and there’s even a really cool Beatles-school trumpet in there. “Showdown” opens with a Moog line that is pure Styx or Kansas, take your pick, and it comes in at regular intervals like a progressive rock ghost come to haunt the Annual Glitter Ball. The song’s another sing-along and real catchy, and it gallops along except when that progressive rock organ slows things down and in general makes a nuisance of itself.
Subject-wise “Showdown” is Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive” thirteen years ahead of its time—it opens with Goedert singing, “Strap on my holster, load up my gun/ hop on my horse, and I’m on the run,” and he ends things with the lines, “This is this and that is that, good guys always wear white hats.” Except in White Witch’s case they’re not of the ten-gallon variety but have points on them. I’m betting that the “crystal” in “Crystalize and Realize” is guaranteed New Age aura-cleansing or your money back; the lyrics are embarrassing Mary Poppins poppycock but include the very “Space Oddity” invitation to “Hop inside my rocketship and quickly we’ll disperse.” The song opens with some spooky “Black Water” wind chimes, the Moog comes in, then Goedert goes full psychedelic glam; the song its Pink Floyd in glitter with more than a touch of D. Bowie futurism in it. It’s almost impossible to imagine this baby coming out of Southern rock territory, but these are the kinds of freaks I’d have wanted to hang out in high school.
And speaking of high school, on the mid-tempo funky glam metal extravaganza “Black Widow Lover” Goedert sings about the hottie he “saw in class” and he’s so enamored by her spidery pulchritude he’s even willing to carry her books! The song really swings—the bass is as heavy as her history book, Pendergrass plays some friendly piano, and when Goedert isn’t calling her number he’s hitting these impossible high notes, making like Jagger, or going “ssssshhhh” like he’s the school librarian.
It’s a great song, as is closer “Aunti Christy/Harlow,” on which Goedert goes every bit as wham-bam-than-you-glam as that guy in The Darkness. Most of what he’s singing is Aquarian gibberish along the lines of “Babylonian prince, celestial gleam. Auntie, Auntie Christy/Nebuchadnezzar yeast, an astrological feast,” and you have to wonder if he’s singing about a yeast infection. But suddenly he shifts gears goes all biblical Rapture on ya and even offers up some pertinent bibical passages to help educate you:
“Mark 13:22
Revelations 13:18
Revelations 13:16
Revelations 14:9-10″
How often do you run across a recommended reading list in a song? Well Rod Stewart does it in “Every Picture Tells a Story,” but he’s talking about authors and not actual books and even comes out and admits he hasn’t read ‘em! The song itself is head-on hard rock, it’s got these brutal power chords and lots of crunchy stop and start with maybe one or four too many tempo changes. But it’s Goedert’s space age vocal chords that are the real show-stopper; they’re so fantastic even the brief (but not brief enough) drum solo and Moog squiggles and cathedral organ can’t stop ‘em, and his proto-rapping at the end is so cool it wears alligator-skin boots.
“Class of 2000″ is the album’s crowning achievement and a true lost Glam classic. It’s ”All the Young Dudes” American style. It’s not as anthemic as the Mott the Hoople classic, and if I HAD to compare it to another song it would be Cheap Trick’s “Surrender.” It opens with some pretty guitar and piano, then the Moog comes whooshing in and Goedert sings, “Class of 2000, we were wearing silver suits that year/Mum’s hair was slick, she looked like a rooster,” then adds “Dad still hits the weed, but us kids/we don’t smoke now to get high/We just turn on this machine, it sends out this frequency/And it blows our minds.” Is that some supercool futuristic Glam shit or what?
Then the song kicks into high gear on the chorus and I’ll be damned if Goedert isn’t the Great American Aladdin Sane. Then he returns to his story, talk/singing about how “the Dean tried to rear me apart with his mind-whip” and he ended up “in the space guard on the moon with a weirdo from Saturn named Chapes.” Basically his moonage daydream is a nightmare; after his lunar stint he finds himself stationed on the Planet Con where he meets a hot number and Uranus government employee named Lindy Blue Star who turns out to be an android! Which Goedert pronounces “annnnnrrroid.”
Then Goedert mines the same apocalyptic territory David Bowie does in “Five Years”; he knows his days are numbered, singing, “Wait until the sun burns out, then it will be too late, then we’ll all die “ And I haven’t even mentioned the spectacular midsection that has Peterson whipping it out Mick Ronson style on guitar, after which Goedert sends a scream into the next galaxy. Then Peterson serves up this baroque and totally Saturn-bound organ solo after which, I swear to Eno, the band breaks into this incredible Guns N’ Roses-on-Mars speedway boogie that’ll knock your jewel-encrusted spaceboots off.
Then Goedert launches another scream into deep space where it’s probably still floating around screaming, the band repeats the first verse and chorus, and Pendergrass plays a short but dead-on perfect Southern rock guitar solo. Sounds like he’s auditioning for a spot in Blackfoot. “Class of 2000″ is one in a million, and the friend who turned me on to White Witch swears he used to hear it on the radio, but where? Pluto? The state-run radio of the government of Uranus? WLSD out of San Francisco?
White Witch never stood a chance. The tastemakers hated them; Rolling Stone magazine gave A Spiritual Greeting a one-star rating and dismissed it as “Halloween music.” And it didn’t help that the band was in the stable of thee quintessential Southern rock label Capricorn Records, which had no clue what to do with ‘em. But the band’s real problem was they were totally beyond labeling because they were all over the place and couldn’t settle on a sound, which ironically is what makes them so fascinating and great. They were ahead of their time (real Glam Metal pioneers) and behind the times (glitter rock was basically DOA by 1974) at the same time, and that’s no way to go platinum. White Witch rode high in the saddle, and rightly so. Unfortunately, nobody was buying the horse.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
