I have a heroically garbled cassette tape from 1978 of Romantic Noise, Willie Phoenix's best band EVER, playing a song called "I Feel New." John Ballor, the lead guitarist of Romantic Noise, sings lead on the tune and it is, quite simply, one of the most gorgeous, heartfelt tunes I have ever heard in my rock & roll life.

The quote above was the first paragraph of The Ballad of Willie Phoenix part one / Romantic Noise and The Buttons, 1978-1980 in 2013, from my old blog, Growing Old With Rock & Roll. John only sang lead on about three tunes in Romantic Noise: the aforementioned “I Feel New,” another great power-pop tune called “Holly” and a raver called (I think) “Politician, Politician” that only got played once when I saw the band. (Songs came & went pretty quickly in those days, Willie was CRANKIN’ out the tunes, most of them good, many of them great.)

Colin wrote me yesterday and said that he read John had passed away. From what I can piece together with my rudimentary computer skills, John died peacefully in hospice care in Ann Arbor, MI, from complications of MS and cancer.

I’m not really gonna get into all that, though. I’m gonna remember John to the stage right of Willie, spinnin’ out great concise lead guitar lines & solos (Willie didn’t start playin’ lead guitar until The Shadowlords in 1982) and adding backing vocals along with bass player extraordinaire Greg Glasgow in Romantic Noise and The Buttons. You can check out all the stuff I said about those bands by following that link above if you like, but let me just say this: Willie Phoenix has been a genius musician since the first week we met in 1978, but those two bands – Romantic Noise and The Buttons – with John & Greg and successive drummers Dee Hunt and Jerry Hanahan were Willie’s best bands EVER, largely on the strength of the musicians involved in those bands. (On the other hand, Willie was writing SUCH great songs in that halcyon late-70’s era it’s possible that the quality of the tunes improved the musicianship of the band.)

John went on to play with a lot of other bands after The Buttons broke up in 1980: The Amenders, Civil Waif, The Waifs, etc. I think one of them even got signed to Arista in the 1990’s, but I’m not sure which one. I am sure of this, though, my favorite post-Buttons story about John involved that band. In the early ‘90’s Willie was playing with The True Soul Rockers; Kozmos on bass, Mike Parks on lead guitar and the rock-solid Jim Johnson on drums. One weekend the TSR was playing at Chollie’s, a little dive bar in the Graceland shopping center that was formerly a Long John Silvers. (You could still smell the fried fish in that place.)

It was summertime & hot and Mike Parks & I were hangin’ around outside during one of the set-breaks when a big-ass white limousine pulled into the parking lot and stopped in front of Chollie’s. Mike & I just looked at each other and Mike said, “Well, this guy’s gotta be lost.” The back door of the limo opened and out stepped John and his wife & Civil Waif band-mate Laura. (John just MIGHT have been wearing a white suit to match the limo, but my memory’s a little hazy on that.)

“Hey guys,” John smiled brightly, shaking Mike’s & my hands, “how’ve you been?” I laughed, fixed John with a stare and said, “John, you hired a fucking LIMO to make an entrance at CHOLLIE’S? Arista must be paying you a LOT of money.”

John just switched on that little-boy grin of his at my calling him out, and we went in and caught the last set. I think that might have been the last time I ever saw John, and I treasure that memory to this day.

Check out the picture below, and make no mistake: John Ballor was the PRETTIEST lead guitarist I ever changed a string for. – Ricki C. / May 1st, 2019.

ROMANTIC NOISE / 1978

(from Ricki C. - It seemed like we were getting a little too serious and devotional in our Willie coverage, so I thought I’d throw in a coupla mildly scabrous, “when-we-was-young” rock & roll stories from back in the day. Apologies to everybody involved, not many names were changed. Click here to hear two FREE songs from the Willie Phoenix Tribute Machine and links to all things Willie Phoenix)

When I first met Willie in 1978, when he was leading Romantic Noise, the band (Willie, Greg Glasgow on bass & vocals, John Ballor on lead guitar & vocals, and Dee Hunt – the pride of Beckley, West Virginia – on drums) all lived together in a house on 4th Street, right around the corner from that little strip-shopping center on Summit, near Oakland, where Café Bourbon Street and The Summit are located. (I’m not sure Willie lived there all the time. As always, his living arrangements were and are a mystery to me, but he was consistently there whenever I dropped by to visit.)

Frequent visitors to the 4th Street house were The CookieBakers: three teenage girls – Erin, Kim & Cindy, by name – who came to all the bands’ gigs and, true to their name, baked cookies for the boys. It was all really quite innocent & charming; the girls really did bake cookies and bring them to the house. They weren’t groupies exactly, but Kim and Willie “dated” for quite some time and Erin later married and still later was divorced from Greg, so more than chocolate chips got exchanged, if you get my drift.

Anyway, one day in early spring ’78 we were all at the house and Erin was telling an elaborate story about something that had happened at high school that day. She was wearing a longish skirt, but the skirt was also really sheer and once the setting sun starting pouring in the picture window in the front of the house, she might as well NOT HAVE BEEN WEARING A SKIRT AT ALL. So Erin’s jumping around, acting out the story and the guys and I are all stifling laughs, just staring at her essentially naked from the waist down form, when Kim walks back in from the kitchen and yells, “ERIN, WHAT ARE YOU DOING??!!!?”

She pulls a confused Erin out of the sunlight while the rest of us just fall over laughing. Erin turns beet-red and flees the room, pulling her skirt tighter well after the fact and Kim soundly reads us the riot act: “That wasn’t funny, you guys, that was just mean.” I think she might have actually cuffed Willie on the head, and then she spun on me, saying, “I would have expected this from these guys, Ricki, but I really expected better behavior from you.” What the hell? Was my twelve-years-of-Catholic-school-upbringing really that apparent, even at that late a date?

“I’m just one of the boys,” I said to a livid Kim, “you’d best not expect that much of me.” That became only truer & truer as the year went on.

It’s after a gig at Bernie’s Bagels. I’m packing up gear and Willie initiates a conversation with my lead singer & girlfriend Nicole, whom I’ve brought along to the show that night:

Willie – “Hey Nicole, why don’t we go out to my car?”

Nicole (feigning naivete, she’s seen this Willie show before) – “What would we do in your car, Wilie?”

Willie – “Oh, we’d just talk and stuff. It’d be no big deal.”

Nicole – “Well, we could talk right here, Willie, we’re talking right now.”

Willie – “Yeah, but in my car, we could listen to music, or we could talk more private. Or do more private things.”

Nicole (in a tone like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth) – “Oh, I’m not sure Ricki would like it if we did more private things, Willie.”

Willie – “Oh no, Ricki would be cool with that. Ricki’s a cool guy.”

Ricki – “WILLIE, I’M STANDING RIGHT HERE.”

Willie (glancing briefly in my direction, and then totally ignoring the outburst) – “So, whattya say, should we go outside?”

Nicole – “We’re not going out to your car, Willie.”

Willie – “Okay, just give it some thought,” patting Nicole’s hand and walking over to a random girl standing by the bar, “Hey, why don’t we got out to my car?”

III

Drummer Dee Hunt, Willie & I are having a bite to eat at that Wendy’s across from campus by Schoolkid’s (now Used Kid’s) Records and Willie starts telling us – apropos of not much – that he scored the night before with a Hare Krishna girl he picked up at the airport. Dee & I exchange a glance, and then Dee says, “You made it with a Hare Krishna girl?” “Yeah,” Willie says, nonchalantly, like this is an everyday occurrence in the little rock & roll circles in which we move.

“Didn’t it creep you out that she was bald?” Dee asked, in those long-ago pre-Sinead O’Connor days of the late 70’s.

“Well, I made her wear a hat,” Willie deadpans, and I laugh so hard that some of my Frosty comes out my nose.

Willie was my hero.

I miss the 1970’s. – Ricki C. / March 4th, 2015.

Willie Phoenix & Dee Hunt / May, 1978

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