Original Lineup
Brad Beamon ~ Drums
(until Jan 73)
Lorey Flynn - Rhythm Guitar
(until Oct 72)
Mark Latham ~ Lead Guitar
Richard
Sanders ~ Bass, Vocals
Mike
Wallace ~ Vocals, Harp
Final Lineup
Mike
Fisher ~ Rhythm Guitar, Vocals (from Oct 72)
Bill Hon ~ Drums (from
Jan 73)
Mark Latham ~ Lead Guitar
Richard
Sanders ~ Bass, Vocals
Mike
Wallace ~ Vocals, Harp
John Mark Latham
RUCKUS
In the summer of 1972 I was contacted out of the blue by an old friend, bass player, former bandmate and former roommate named Richard Sanders. Rich and I had been in two previous bands together, in fact, he was the bassist in my first band ever, Product Fyve. He wanted to know if I'd be interested in becoming involved in a project he was just beginning to get off the ground. He told me he had been jamming with a guitarist named Lorey Flinn and they felt there was enough potential there to justify trying to build a band around what they were hearing in those jam sessions.At the time I was the lead singer/frontman in a band called "Hooch" (having given up being a drummer the year before) with four other guys, and Richard's proposal was for three of us, that would be me, our drummer, Brad Beamon and our lead guitarist, a 16-year-old phenom named Mark Latham to join him and Lorey for a pretty straight ahead take-no-prisoners rock & roll band and the early rehearsals were pretty eye-opening. We all clicked right out of the gate, and it became a pretty good combo in a very short time.
Our song list ran a fairly wide gamut (for the time), with Richard being the more Deep Purple/Captain Beyond/Blue Oyster Cult influenced 'yin' to the more doggedly Rolling Stones style blues-rock based 'yang' that Lorey and I tended to gravitate toward. Mark was exactly the right lead guitarist for that wide a swing in styles, because he could convincingly go from one end of that spectrum to the other easily. Some of the songs we played in Ruckus were Blue Oyster Cult's "Cities On Flame With Rock & Roll", the Stones' "Street Fighting Man", "Sympathy For The Devil" and "Citadel", "Cottage Cheese" by Crow (featuring Richard on lead vocals), Chuck Berry's "School Days", "Good Old Rock & Roll" by Cat Mother & the All-Night News Boys, even "Marley Purt Drive", a slow song by the (pre-disco) Bee Gees. We also did a couple of our own songs, one written by Richard and one by me.
Eventually Lorey's unending search for cosmic truth led him away from the group, and we replaced him with Richard's and my old pal (and lead guitarist from our first band) Mike Fisher. Not long after that we found ourselves looking for a replacement for our drummer, Brad. We found the right man in Bill Hon, a local drummer who somehow no one had ever heard of. Fortunate for us, because Bill fit right in. That was the lineup until the band finally folded up for good.
When that happened it came as quite a surprise to me, but Richard and Mark split off in one direction, and the rest of us had other paths to travel. I had an infant son, and I spent the next few months catching up on a little of the 'Dad time' I'd been missing out on.
During the time Ruckus was together we played in bars, at high school proms, city park concerts, a couple of college shows and even a Job's Daughters dance in McCall, Idaho but we also became what amounted to Brother Speed's 'house band'. Brother Speed was (in fact, still is) the local outlaw motorcycle group, and they adopted us very early in our existence. We played all of their spring openers, new year's parties and other gatherings. Those were among the most interesting events I've ever attended.
Mike Wallace, February 2012
hardprom@hotmail.com
