RASPBERRIES
They're Lightweight Title Contenders
 
By Michael Jaye
 
"Our most obvious problem," said Eric Carmen, lead singer and titular head of the Raspberries, "is having people think we're some kind of contrived Madison Avenue project."
 
And why is that? "Because we present our audience with something they haven't seen in almost ten years. Like the Beatles used to do, we come on stage dressed identically in our mod suits. People think we look ludicrous, and we do, compared to the way most rock bands are dressing now. But we dress that way because we think it complements our musical style. It's also our way of saying, 'Hey, don't worry about how we look, just judge us by the music we play.'"
 
So far, audience response to the Raspberries has been good. A little too good, in fact, to suit some of their co-acts. On a recent tour the hardworking, crowd-pleasing Raspberries were dropped because they were too tough an act for the Hollies to follow.
 
The four Midwesterners with the mod clothes and the million-dollar smiles have had one gold single, "Go All the Way," off their first album and sales are brisk for their second Capitol LP, Fresh Raspberries.
 
Composed of the "classical" rock & roll ensemble (drums, lead, rhythm and bass guitars), the Raspberries churn out tight, sweet, delicious little ballads which stop just on the tasteful side of mawkish, and short, energetic rockers whose only problem is the absence of any instrumental break long enough to get up a true Seventies boogie.
 
"We play the kind of music we liked when we were kids," said Carmen, 23, "you know—Beatles, Beach Boys, early Kinks. We try to put more sunshine into our songs than the Beatles and more rock than the Beach Boys.
 
"And about our name. We were sitting around one day, trying to think up something that would capture the real flavor of our music and also set us apart from traditional freaky groups like, for instance, Savoy Brown or Jethro Tull. We weren't having any luck. I got disgusted and for a joke threw up my hands and said, just like the Little Rascals used to do on TV, 'Awww, Raspberries!' The rest of the guys jumped on it and we became the Raspberries."
 
Each of the Raspberries—Carmen, drummer Jim Bonfanti, lead guitarist Wally Bryson and bass player Dave Smalley—grew up in the Cleveland area where they had early, scrambling days playing beer bars, frat parties and discotheques.
 
Jimmy lenner, who now produces the band, pulled a few strings and got several record companies down to listen to the Raspberries at JB's, a hot, sticky Cleveland rock club. In the frantic bidding war that followed, Capitol won out.
 
Rehearsing in Hollywood recently for the KROQ Coliseum concert, the Raspberries chugged into "Long Tall Sally," resurrecting the Beatles' 1965 arrangement complete to the Paulish ooooohs. Herb Belkin, Capitol VP in charge of A&R, says it's the stuff that long-lived, big-selling rock groups are made of.
 
Watching them practice, Belkin said: "For a long time now, people have been wondering which direction rock music is gonna go. I think lightweight rock will be it. For those of us old enough to remember, it's reminiscent of the Beatles of the mid-Sixties. And it also turns on a whole new generation of kids who really heard the fresh kind of rock that first made the Beatles popular.
 
"Anyway, I hope it does," Belkin sighed, because we've got a fuckin' lot of money tied up in these guys."

Rolling Stone / January 18, 1973