l to r in the back, Rick Hull, Peter Johnson, Tim McDonald, front left Bob Saunar, seated in center the late Jon Floth

Les:  My next question is, how did the Monocles evolve into the Higher Elevation?

Rick:  Well, we were having like a band meeting at Tinkerbell's.  We had gone through so much.  We played our last gig as the Monocles in Greeley, Colorado with the Beau Brummels.  It was in a way a wake because we were no longer the Monocles.  We were talking about this is an end of an era and the idea came up that we change our name.   We thought about it for about a week and yeah, it was pretty much decided.  We were sitting there and came up with all kinds of names and Kevin’s little (half-brother), I think he was probably 7 or 8 years old.  He’s just sitting there and he looks at Tinkerbell and says, "Ma, call it T H E."

She goes, "The?"  He goes, "No.  The Higher Elevation."

That’s how it happened.  From that point on we were called The Higher Elevation.

On June 9, 1967 it was announced in the papers of the official name change to The Higher Elevation.

That kind of drug into the legal implications and this and that because we had signed agreements before as the Monocles and everything all switched over to The Higher Elevation.  I think we decided to change our name yet didn't make it official until we had played all the gigs we had booked.  There was also all the legal stuff with Claridge Music,  Liberty Records and the contracts we had signed ahead of time for appearances and concerts.  We also wanted to make sure that the public knew that T.H.E. was, in fact, The Monocles so we didn't lose our following.  I can't remember a clear cut day that we quit being the Monocles and became T.H.E.  I remember the lawyers going into a tailspin over the fact that it was possible that we could release songs that were copyrighted under the Monocles and it's members, under T.H.E. and it's members.  It was nearly impossible to get releases from Robb and Don H. because they were in the military and couldn't be reached, so it took awhile to get all the little wrinkles ironed out.  But it was just, boom this little kid came up with T H E, call it The T H E.  So that’s how that happened, and it was kind of marking a new era.

Then Tim McDonald's group broke up and he joined us.  Back in the old days when we were just starting out, his band The Avantis, named after their drummer’s Dad's limited edition Studebaker Avanti, were very much like Beach Boys you know, dressed in the surfer shirts.  Their parents had a lot more money.  Our parents really didn’t contribute a lot (laughs) until Tinkerbell came along, but their parents did so they had uniforms.  They were kind of a rival since we lived in the same town and went to the same schools, so it kind of got us out of this mediocre rivalry stuff, you know. 

Now we’re the Higher Elevation.  So it kind of put us at a different level because we definitely wanted to make a step.  That’s when our national recording contract and everything happened, and was the final group with Peter and Bobby Saunar and Jon and Tim McDonald.  That was the zenith and that’s probably why I got out of music because we had such a magic on stage.  We could look at each other and read our thoughts.  We knew what we were gonna do way before we even did it.  The ease that we played.  I mean none of the gigs were mundane anymore after that group formed.  Nothing was ever the same and it was like there was magic on stage.  After awhile I mean you play gig after gig after gig you know, it gets kind of mundane.

Les:  (Rick is going through some of his memorabilia.)  Is that the sheet music to “That Acapulco Gold”? 

Rick:  Yeah.  You see we sat down and signed contracts together when we signed with Liberty Records.  We all sat at the same table and John Carter and Tim Gilbert were there, and after we signed they said, "Well ok, here’s all the songs that we’ve got available.  Which one do you want?"

Well, we didn’t want "Acapulco Gold."  And then "Incense and Peppermints" it was like well, we might be able to do something with that, but we really liked "Crazy Bicycle."

Click the record above to hear a sound clip.

"Country Club Affair" differs most from the released version in that Peter Johnson sings lead.

Peter:  I had forgotten that I sang this but I like the way I did it.  I had kind of an attitude.  I wasn't the happy go lucky guy singing it.  It was more surly.  Tim McDonald sang the released version.

(Rick is showing me his records.)  These are the original acetates; "Country Club Affair," "Good Time Music."  I don’t think this ("Good Time Music") was ever produced.  There’s a funny story about this one cause we were recording at Sunset Studios on Hollywood Boulevard upstairs.  Tinkerbell set this up.  She got us this studio and Frank Slay and us were in there and we did all the songs that we wanted and we had some time left.  So Frank says, "What do you know that’s unusual that would go?"

And we said, "Good Time Music."  We love that one.  So we played it for Frank. 

Frank says, "All right!  Party song!"  So we got all these glasses and ashtrays and all kinds of stuff, and we laid down the music track and we did one vocal track.  Then everybody got in the studio and acted like we were having a party.  Right.  Breaking glasses and laughing you know, and we went back to it and played it a couple of times and added a few things and were just having a great time with it. 

Pretty soon the light went on in the control room and Frank says, "Hey, do you mind if this guy comes in and plays tambourine?" 

We went, "Why?  We don’t care."

And here comes this long lanky guy walkin’ in and he says, "Well I like that song and I was downstairs and I heard you, and I really like what you’re doing to this song.  I want to get in on this." 

So we were laying the other vocal tracks in and decided, hey a little tambourine in there, that won’t hurt a thing.  So here we go, and we sing all the background, and this guy is wailing on this tambourine and he did a pretty good job.  And we patted him on the back, and we thanked him, and went out and our time was up. So we start packing stuff up and everything and our mind is on the first cold beer and we asked Frank, "By the way, who was that guy you drug in here, that John guy?"  And everybody in the control room just cracks up. 

"You didn’t recognize him?"

"What do you mean recognize him?"

He said, "Yeah, we’re upstairs.  He was downstairs and heard the song."

"Yeah."

"Well Kama Sutra Records is downstairs."

"That was John Sebastian?"

He’s going "Yeah."

We had no idea.   It was totally amazing.  That’s the first time all the guys had seen the ocean.  We had barely been out of Colorado.  Anyway John Sebastian wrote that song, “Good Time Music,” and Jon Floth does the intro (sings “Good Time Music on the radio boys”)  It’s really a hot version of that and these are the original acetates.  (Here's) The "Wizard of Love."

Les:  Was that ever released?

Rick:  No.

Unfortunately the original acetate of "Thoughts of Lila" will no longer play through and has started to bubble.  I was able to play the end and it was identical to the released single.  Click the acetate to hear the end clip of it.  The acetate of "Here Comes Sunshine" is almost the same as the released version.  The single has an extra keyboard overdub in the intro.

Rick:  I was the only guy that had ever been to California.  My grandparents lived there so I went every year, but these guys had never seen an ocean.  You should have seen the first time I took them to the beach.  Their mouths were down to here for hours.  Oh my god!  You know it was really funny because there’s an island outside of Los Angeles that you can just barely see and they’re all standing there, and it’s just really barely on the horizon if you’re on the Long Beach area.  They’re looking out there and they spot this island and they go, "Look there’s Hawaii!"  (much laughing)  It was just hilarious.  Did I ever tell you the story of where the song "Thoughts of Lila" came from?

Les:  No 

Rick:  Well, Jon and I flew out on our first trip to California to record and the other guys drove out.  So Jon and I fly, this was his first time in an airplane.  That was hilarious cause Jon was trying to be very cool, very cool.  Knew everything, been there done that.  So keeping him calm on the airplane when he was scared to death, that was hilarious.  Anyway, we get to Los Angeles and we take one of the limousines from the airport to the Hollywood Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard.  That’s where the limousine went.  Well, at that time that was one of the gay havens.  Jon I don’t think even knew what a gay person was, so anyway we were in this hotel and I’m on the phone trying to get us a room.  We aren’t gonna stay there, you know, and we didn’t have a whole bunch of money, so I’m on the phone calling local motels.  I finally get hold of the Travel Lodge down at the far end of Sunset Boulevard, and so it’s not a real shiny place but it’s not East L.A. either.  So anyway I call a taxi and we’re waiting for them and Jon goes into the bathroom.  He comes walking out of the bathroom with his eyes about this big around and I said, "Jon, what’s the matter." 

He goes, "Well I don’t know whether I want to talk about it."  (much laughing) 

"What happened?"

And he said, "Well I was going to the bathroom and this guy comes up and started looking at me and watching me.  Then he asked me if I wanted to go up to his room!" (hysterical laughter)

And I said, "OK, we’re getting out of here."

And he said, "Well, what’s the matter with that guy, I don’t know?"

I mean he was completely just frying his brain so we go down and we get checked into the motel, second floor, and they got a balcony out there.  So Jon and I stayed in the room and drank a few beers that night.  He gets up the next morning and we’re standing out on the balcony watching the stuff going on. We walked up and down Sunset Boulevard a little while and got a little taste of what Hollywood was like in the sixties.  That was phenomenal in the sixties.  I mean the streets were packed with freaks.  Wall to wall freaks.  I mean it was a happening.  Weird.  Everybody was stoned.  I mean walking down the streets smoking a joint, high on acid, everything, you know.  So the next morning Jon is standing out on the balcony.  Well here comes a couple of working girls walking down there.  Jon being the suave kind of guy (laughs) starts talking to them.  Well, he thinks he’s really hot stuff because these girls are really paying attention to him. 

So he comes running back into the room, "Oh, man!  These two gorgeous girls are down there and they’re talking to me." 

I’m going, "Jon, no, you don’t need to go out there."

"No, I’m gonna go down."

I couldn’t talk him out of it.  He’s going down there so I’m watching and he’s talking to these two girls.  Well, they’re talking for a half hour or 45 minutes.  Of course, this is 10 or 11 o’clock in the morning.  So anyway, he motions for me to come down.  As it happens, these girls were taking their day off.  I said, "Well OK, that’s cool." 

He said, "What are we going to do.  Let’s do something."  He wanted to go to the beach.  No, they didn’t want to go to the beach.  They wanted to go to Disneyland.  Well, here we go.  Jump in the car, off to Orange County going to Disneyland.  So we’re driving down the freeway and Jon’s sitting in the front seat with this girl, Lila.  So we’re driving along and Jon’s trying to be really cool.  He opens the glove compartment.  Well out falls 2 or 3 pairs of panties and several packages of condoms, and Jon freaks out. "What the hell?"

So it was part of his awakening, the girls are just laughing their asses off.  I was laughing my ass off.  Jon is going, "Ok."

Anyway we go spend the day in Disneyland and we come back and Jon’s in love. He still doesn’t understand what these girls do for a living. 

So anyway, we get back and Jon goes, "All right man, what do you guys wanna do tonight?"

They said, "Well, we gotta go work."

"Oh.  Well where do you work?  We’ll stop by."

So, Lila takes Jon to the side, sits him down and explains to him what their profession is and after that’s done they get up and leave.  Jon just sits there.  I mean this guy is devastated, just devastated. 

So I said, "OK, look, I’m going to take you down to Hollywood Boulevard tonight and I’m going to show you some freaky stuff.  Man, we’re gonna have a good time.  Just forget about Lila.  So as the night went on we got pretty ripped.  Whatever was available.  I don’t know what was happening but anyway Jon came up with this other very strange girl and it was in a place called Pandora’s Box on Sunset Boulevard, and she had what she called a thinking cap.  Well what this was, was like a beanie sort of thing and it had a bowl, a big bowl on top of it with a hose.  Well, after wearing the thinking cap for a little while, Jon quit mourning his broken relationship with Lila.  He had a good time that night and came back to the motel.  He got up the next morning and wrote the words to the song, ‘thinking cap thoughts about Lila.’  That’s where the song came from. 

It was really funny cause after the guys got there Liberty Records would call us and they’d say, ‘well ok the limousine will pick you up at such and such a time,’ and what they would do is take us to all the happening places in Hollywood.  We went to the Whiskey a Go-Go, Dino’s Lodge--which was 77 Sunset Strip.  Dean Martin owned that place, but we would go in and be seated with celebrities.  They would take a break in the entertainment and the emcee would introduce us.  So we would stand up and the who’s who of Hollywood would be there and they would introduce this new group, The Higher Elevation.  We went into the Whiskey a Go-Go and got seated with the Mamas and Papas and we sat the whole set with the Mamas and Papas, so we got to rub elbows.  That’s how they would promote new bands is take them around and we got to go to the Playboy Club, and you know everywhere that was anything in Hollywood.  Chauffer driven, let right in, and Liberty Records, that’s how they would open a new group.   

"Thoughts of Lila" became the B-side of The Higher Elevation's biggest single, "Here Comes Sunshine".  "Summer Skies" was to be the last single of the main lineup of The Higher Elevation.  It was backed with "Country Club Affair".

Les:  Do you remember what happened to the hearses?  Did they continue on with the Higher Elevation? 

Rick:  No, they finally got too expensive to maintain.  We sold them to somebody who just really loved them. (laughs)  I think some hippies in a commune (laughs more) but they really loved them!  It got to where a hearse doesn’t really hold that much equipment, and it got to where taking two Cadillac hearses to a job was…those things only got about 3 miles to the gallon, plus when you load them that heavy.  I mean the vehicle is heavy in the first place.  Then you put heavy equipment in.  We had to put truck tires on them things and they couldn’t be too tall.  It got so that it wasn’t practical anymore so we got a van, and then a truck, and besides that, we had a roadie now.

Peter was always doing something on stage.  Jon was a phenomenal guitarist and pretty good at jokes, and I was always the clown.  I was always actually more the frontman than anybody.  Bobby Saunar and I would have little routines during a song.  He’d lean over and act like he was hitting me in the head and hit the bass drum at the same time.  There was stuff going on all the time.  It wasn’t just standing there and playing, and like I said, there was a magic that you just couldn’t describe.  When that ended I just couldn’t see that happening again and I wouldn’t have been satisfied with anything else.  So that’s why I decided, and Tim did too, that we can’t go on with this music business.  Plus our parents really did pressure us to go get a real job.  Go cut your hair and get a real job. 

So then the band decided that was it, and you know, I mean just making it that close (with "Here Comes Sunshine"), cause we were in the Top 50.  Then we dropped down to the Top 100, and never could get back there.

Click here to see a KIMN survey with "Here Comes Sunshine" as the KIMN 5 Star Pick Hit of the Week from the first week of 1968.

 

Les:  After you left there was an incarnation of the band that existed.

left to right: Jon Floth, Jim Krug, Rich Sallee

Rick:  Yeah, that was pre-Fat Emma I believe.  They tried to perpetuate the Higher Elevation and it just kind of fell apart.  I think that’s when I moved to California.

Les:  What did you do out in California? 

Rick:  I started construction.  Well first Tim and I stayed in Breckenridge after the band broke up, and worked in the ski area.  Then I moved back down to Greeley, got married and lived for a short time in Greeley, and then moved to California in 72.

Les:  Do you still play at all? 

Rick:  Gosh I haven’t for several years now.  I’ve always had musician friends, and they either had a band and I would play or sit in with them.  When I lived up in the mountains in California a couple of the bands would travel up just because they could leave their bass player home and I’d play for free, (laughs) so they’d make a little more money.  Damn musicians! (more laughing)

Rick Hull, October 5, 2004

More photos and stories of The Monocles and The Higher Elevation can be seen on the Peter Johnson pages.

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