"Girl if you want me to be your man"

This song was composed by the original Barons.

I can remember playing it many times and towards the end of Barons 1, we finally used a “Volume Pedal”. But before that, it was done using the guitars volume control to try to make a kind of Wah Wah effect along with your Silvertone amp’s reverb set all the way to 10, full bore.

I do recall that it was one song that we never knew how well it would be performed each time for sure. Simple and complicated at the same time. Backup vocals, tonality, chorus, with the neat bass run and off set rhythm, and solid drum pattern.

When it all came together is was Great! When it didn’t, it was a total “Train Wreck!”

Larry Nelson

Two of the songs we recorded in the 60’s were “Oleander, Mesopotamia Rag” and “Not Yesterday’s News”.

Separately, during the same time period, I played with Mike Rice , Doug Harwood, and Cash Lowery for a while. We played original songs in some of the Hollywood clubs.

I also remember practice at Rich's house where Mr. Bianchi always provided us with encouraging words .......... and a few solo tunes from his infamous “Hawaiian steel guitar nose flute”. If memory serves me right, Rich also had a steel guitar.

Steve Rush

After The Barons disbanded, my cousin, Steve Rush, and I started jamming with Richard Bianchi. His band, The Neptunes, had also disbanded a little previous to us. After his band’s breakup, Richard had been playing as a duo with another past member of The Neptunes, Richard McDowell. They did all acoustic covers of Byrds, Bob Dylan, Donovan, and material in that vane. They did it very well, with great harmonies! 

Steve and my other cousin Larry Nelson, used to hang out with Emitt Rhodes and the other members of The Merry-Go Round at that time. That’s where they met Doug Harwood. Doug was the original drummer for the Merry-Go-Round before Joel Larson. As a side note, a high school buddy of mine, Mike Rice, was the original bass player for the group. It seemed  everyone used to know everyone in the music scene around Hawthorne.

Doug had just left The Merry-Go-Round and Steve asked him if he wanted to play with us. That’s pretty much how The Barons (ver 2) got started.

We were pretty good! We played a number of places, battle of the bands, etc. around the South Bay. We even recorded four demo songs in this “home studio” located in the Valley (I think). We also got hooked up with Cash Lowery, a song writer friend of Steve’s, and recorded a couple of tunes with him that he had written.

Dennis Hageman

The Barons

(ver 2)

"Broken Dreams"

This is a song that was originally written in the late 60's. Richard Bianchi recently dug it out of his memories and did a little re-write and a rough recording. He sent it to me and I added a bass, harmonica, vocal, and mandolin track and came up with this recording so we would have some memory of it. We still don't know which one of us wrote it originally!

This picture is from circa 1968. We auditioned for a battle of the bands and for some reason, they put us in the "R&B" catagory. We didn't know any "R&B" music so we had to learn a few songs. I don't remember all of the songs we played, but one of them was "Give me a ticket for an airplane". We figured that was "R&B" enough!

The double breasted suits came about while we were digging around in Richard's dad's garage. He had a bunch of them in boxes for some reason!

We got hats to go along with the suits. The idea was for us to look like 30's gangsters.

We went to the battle dressed in our suits, played our "R&B" songs, and went home.

Dennis Hageman