THE RASPBERRIES Sound Without Sugar and Cream By Ed Naha   It's been slightly over a year since Eric Carmen, Wally Bryson, David Smalley and Jim Bonfanti made their initial dent into the rock and roll charts with a hit single and LP. The single was entitled "Go All The Way" and the LP was called, simply, Raspberries.

During their "Go All the Way" heyday, everything looked rosy for the Cleveland foursome. A lot of folks compared them to the Beatles and the boys were quoted in Circus as saying they liked to think of themselves as being "right in the middle…
 
More American than the Beatles but more British than the Beach Boys." A second LP and hit single appeared in the spring of '73 and then…nothing. The Raspberries seemed to disappear from the face of the earth.
 
A few months ago, however, the high stepping quartet appeared again an the record racks with Side 3 (their third Capitol LP) and a new single, "Tonight." While outwardly, it might seem that the Raspberries are simply repeating their rags to riches gap from last year, the 1973 version of the band is radically different from the embryonic bunch of ex-high school rockers that set the music biz on its ear a year ago. They're a lot more experienced in the do's and don'ts of rockdom and they're concentrating on ignoring some of the don'ts that nearly ended their career before it got off the ground.
 
Speaking from his Cleveland home, shag-haired lead singer Eric Carmen offered some insight as to what caused the Raspberries to go into seclusion after their second long player hit the stands. "A lot of people just didn't understand us," he commented casually. "The problem we had was that we were trying to do something that was not in vogue. We'd come out on stage all dressed in white suits and looked like a cocktail band. Well, that's what we wanted. We wanted to be decidedly different; so ludicrous that people would be forced into listening to the music. Our name and our stage act was designed to shock. It's easy to wear make-up and fly around on stage. You get instant acceptance. A lot of people just didn't catch on to our sense of the absurd. We were the antithesis of David Bowie."
 
Although a lot of audiences were stunned by the original concept of the Berries bunch, by the end of their concerts, according to Eric, "they either loved us or hated us. A lot of kids really dug us, although it was strange to walk on-stage in white when you were opening to Savoy Brown or the Doobie Brothers. Can you imagine playing in suits for a Savoy Brown crowd? It was an experience!"
 
The straw that broke the camel's back, and sent the Raspberries into relative seclusion where plans were made for Side 3, was an ill-fated concert tour with the Hollies. Recalled Eric: "It was really bad, because the Hollies were idols of ours. They had just lost Alan Clarke before the tour and, they had this Swedish singer or something. He was good, but he didn't sound like a Hollie. He had this deep booming voice and having him sing "Bus Stop" was really lame. The crowds were coming to hear them sing all their old stuff and the new group couldn't do it."
 
"To make matters worse, the Hollies used to wear white suits in the old days and we didn't know it. We'd come out in our white suits and do this high energy act and, then the Hollies would come out and the crowd would be restless. Before too long, the Hollies wouldn't even talk to us. They told the agency that was booking the tour that we were boring the crowd. The only way we could stay on their tour was to go on first, before a folk singer. We thought it was unfair that we should be demoted for being too good, so we left."
 
Unfortunately for the Raspberries, the feedback from the tour was that the quartet was bad medicine as far as concerts were concerned. The band then regrouped and changed their stage act, coming up with an LP that heralds the dawning of a "new" Raspberries era which is, in reality, the old Raspberries. "This new album," beamed Eric, "sounds just like we did when we played in bars a few years ago…which is how we've always sounded on stage. Raunchy. We had to back up a bit on stage, though. Our suits were too much of a big step for audiences to get into. Now we dress like '67 flashy British stars and everyone is happy. People are really getting into us and since the new album finally sounds like we sound live, which is more like the pre-Stewart Faces and the Who, there are no more Beatle bags to put us into. We even have two mellotrons on stage with us now (side musicians) so we can have horn lines, string and cello parts when we perform. It's pretty wild."
 
With a fresh new Raspberries LP, a couple of new hit singles and a lot of touring dominating the band's new, improved status, Eric searched for a thought that would best sum up the rock and roll attitude of the band. "Well," he mused, "You can tell everyone that I don't sound like Paul McCartney in person." He don't, folks.

Circus / January 1974