Barry & The Remains never made it big, but they made it
by Michael McCall
Barry Tashian winces every time he hears that his mid-1960s Boston rock band, Barry & the Remains, "stood at the door of stardom but never made it through."
These days, those words come from Peter Wolf, former lead singer of the J. Geils Band, and one of many Boston rockers to follow the Remains to greater renown. Wolf narrates the new documentary, America's Lost Band, which traces the skyrocketing story of the Remains. The documentary has its local premiere with showings on the last two days of the Nashville Film Festival.
Forevermore, the Remains will be part of rock 'n' roll lore as the band that signed to Epic Records, appeared on national TV on The Ed Sullivan Show and Hullabaloo, and, most famously, opened all 19 shows of the Beatles 1966 tour.
Then they broke up.
"People will see the documentary and think, 'Boy, that was really a great opportunity. Too bad those guys didn't take advantage of it!' " Tashian says with a laugh. Now 63 years old, and a Nashville resident since 1980, Tashian was 21 when Barry & The Remains amicably called it quits. He looks back without regrets, a feeling shared by fellow band members.
"People always say, 'What if?' But really, there is no 'what if?' " Tashian says. "Things happened the way they were supposed to happen. We were 19, 20, 21—inexperienced in the world and in solving problems. There was a lot of pot around, so that made it a roller coaster. When our drummer left, we just thought, 'Well, OK, that's it.' "
Today, however, the band has enjoyed 12 years of reunion shows. Their story has been turned into a musical play, All Good Things, and provided the basis for Tashian's book, Ticket to Ride: The Extraordinary Diary of the Beatles' Last Tour. Their Cannery Ballroom performance is one of several appearances they'll make this year, many linked with screenings of the documentary.
"Really, we think it could be better that we didn't become big rock stars," says Tashian. "Because of the lifestyle we were heading toward, we might all be dead now. We might have ended up hating each other or fighting in lawsuits. As it is, we're still friends, and everybody has had a good life. There's nothing to regret."
All four members will attend the Nashville screenings and perform at the film festival's closing party. Tashian is the only one who spent the ensuing years as a touring musician. He played guitar and sang harmony on Gram Parsons' two solo albums, G.P. and Fallen Angel. He recorded and toured as the guitarist and harmony singer in Emmylou Harris' Hot Band from 1980 to 1989.
In Nashville, he and wife Holly Tashian were the first songwriters signed by producer Jim Rooney to his groundbreaking publishing company, Forerunner Music. In 1989, Rooney convinced the husband-and-wife duo to turn their demos into a first album, Trust in Me. They recently released their seventh album, Long Story Short, a sterling collection of acoustic swing and folk-rock.
As for the others, pianist Bill Briggs managed a Volvo dealership; drummer Chip Damiani joined the Barbarians rock band before going into a home improvement business; and bassist Vern Miller played with Donna Summer in the band Crow before becoming a high school music teacher.
Live, they still display what made the band special more than 40 years ago. Damiani and Miller made for an unusually ferocious rhythm section for a mid-1960s band, and the piano-guitar lineup of Briggs and Tashian gave the Remains a distinct sound, with Briggs using his keyboard as a rhythm instrument, playing the same chords that Tashian banged out on his Epiphone guitar in fierce downstrokes. Tashian had a duskier, lower tenor than most young singers of the age, while his solos had a psychotic, freak-out edge to them that was more Captain Beefheart than George Harrison.
Combined with sharp songwriting—songs like "Don't Look Back," "Thank You" and "Why Do I Cry" remain top-notch nuggets of melody-driven '60s guitar rock—The Remains indeed stand as one of the most impressive American bands to rise in the shadow of the British Invasion.
"To me, the great thing now is that, 43 years later, we all love each other, we love playing together, and we're alive and happy," Tashian says. "In the last 12 years, we've played all over Europe and America. We're able to get together and enjoy it for what it is. That's pretty sweet."
Email music@nashvillescene.com.
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