Gary James' Interview With Tony Micale Of
The Reflections



It was 1964 and the British Invasion was in full swing. And then a song came out by a Detroit group called The Reflections that went to number six on the Billboard chart. That song was just "(Just Like) Romeo And Juliet". We talked with Reflections lead singer, Mr. Tony Micale.

Q - Tony, I take it you're still singing these days and The Reflections are still working. Is that correct?

A - Oh, yeah. We have some gigs coming up in West Virginia, Ohio.

Q - What type of shows are you doing?

A - We do a lot of Doo Wop shows with The Crystals. A lot of the old timers I was on tour with in '64. We were on two Dick Clark tours, Show Of Stars and Caravan Of Stars.

Q - Show Of Stars? I've never heard of that one before.

A - Yeah, well that was Gene Pitney. Gene Pitney headed that one, but it was a Dick Clark tour. Then we were on a James Brown tour.

Q - How much work is there for you these days?

A - Not as much as there used to be only because the audience is getting older and and a lot of people can't come to the gigs like they used to. We did a lot of festivals in Michigan and across the country, the big festivals outdoors. We did the Italian Festival in Florida. We did it a couple of years. We have one here. We have one in New York. A lot of theatres across the country, anywhere from New York to California. We owe this all to (TJ) Lubinsky when he creates the show because people thought we were dead before that.

Q - He's the guy behind the P.B.S. shows.

A - Yeah, exactly. After that P.B.S. show, all of a sudden we got hot. People were calling us, asking us to come out. They would say, "I didn't even know you guys were still alive!" (laughs) The funny part of our group is we're the beginning of the '60s. What's so tough about that is people forget that part because The Beatles were so prominent in that time period they forget there were other groups that came out at that point too.

Q - And Classicbands.com is here to remind everybody about that!

A - I know with us we've never felt better singing than when we were kids. When we were kids it was a little different. The audience was screamers and they weren't really listening to you. They were just looking at you. Today it's a listening audience. They listen and acknowledge the fact that either you're a good singer or you're not. We've really had a wonderful response from the audiences that we sing in front of.

Q - When you're singing your songs, people are remembering where they were when they heard those songs.

A - Yes.

Q - The funny thing about a Pop song is it never seems to get old. If you try to watch a movie from fifty years ago it seems dated.

A - You know, you hit it right on. One thing I can honestly say is the '50s and '60s music has been around longer than any other music, well, the '40s as well. The reason the '40s aren't where they used to be is because the age group is no longer there. If they were here that would still be a prominent part of the music industry. With the '50s and '60s, because all the stations played this, if you were a Pop station you were all playing the song. It's not like today where it's so segmented where one station plays Hip-Hop, one station plays R&B and on and on. So, it's a big difference today. The funny part about many of the things we've done in the last, I'll say fifty years that we've been performing, is we're always surprised at the audiences and some of the stories we hear. When we were younger we didn't have that intimacy with an audience like we do today. You never realize how time has past when you sit back and listen to some of these people that come to see you and they have a story to tell you about you. The fun part is we were in Austin, Texas and this young girl came up, probably in her thirties, and said, "Can I take a picture with you?" I said, "Sure." She said, "But I'd like to stage it." I said, "What do you mean, stage it?" She said, "Well, if you don't mind can I just sit on your lap and you put your thumb up to the left of me, like you're giving me the thumbs up deal on your group?" I said, "Sure." So, she sat on my lap. She smiled at the camera and I put my thumb up. Then she hands me a picture of her mother and me at the Dick Clark Caravan Of Stars where her mother was on my lap. (laughs) The funny part about that is you look back at that and you say how time has flown!

Q - You probably don't remember having that picture taken with the mother do you?

A - I do remember some of the pictures. This was in Texas and I do remember we were at a big coliseum and I remember somebody saying she was a belle, a Southern bell. I didn't really know what a Southern bell was. But I remember she was a very, very cute lady. I remember her coming up to me. It's not real vivid in my mind, but it was amazing when I saw the picture. I nearly died! (laughs)

Q - I had no idea that The Reflections were from Detroit. Motown Records got all the publicity, didn't they?

A - Yes. Well, the amazing thing about Golden World (The Reflections record label) that people don't know is many of the musicians were the same musicians that worked for Berry Gordy (Motown Records) and were at our studio. All the people that were very famous did our band tracks. So they were close. Berry Gordy and Ed Wingate, who ran Golden World, were friends. So I don't know how close they were in a relationship that way, whether they were really competing with each other. Eventually Motown bought Golden World. Our studio at the time in '64 was one of the brand new studios being built with the most up to date equipment. If you know what the studios looked like in the old days there were a lot of tubes that made 'em run. This system was built in Cleveland, Ohio and there were drawers in the back of this big console that pulled out, so if something went wrong they'd pull a drawer out and replace it. It was the newest thing going. Our studio was really a nice studio. Eventually it became Studio B for Motown.

Q - Before The Reflections there was The Parisians and you were in The Parisians.

A - Right.

Q - How much success did that group have?

A - We were basically a high school band. We would do a lot of a capella singing at dances. Then we got kind of a reputation and we would go out and perform at what they called the old record hops. DJs would have us come out and do a live a capella show. But we didn't have a record. But when we did record something we recorded it at a little studio. We'd take the old metal 45 dub with us and that was our record. (laughs) We'd have the DJ put it on. Eventually we got more popular and more popular and the group had some transitions with people living. One of them went into the Navy. We eventually became the five original Reflections. It was Ray Steinberg, Phil Castrodale, Dan Bennie, John Dean and myself.

Q - Did any of you guys in the group play an instrument?

A - I played the piano, but not professionally. I played to write. I write a lot of stuff, so I'll use the piano for that. But nobody in the group ever played any instruments onstage. We were strictly a singing group.

Q - Were you writing in the early days?

A - I wrote a song when I left (The Reflections) actually when we kind of wound down The Reflections. Things weren't going like we wanted (them) to. There were many things that happened to our careers that were disappointing. I sat down at the piano and I wrote one tune called "Picture Me And You". After I wrote this tune I found out my contract read that I would not be able to go anywhere and sing unless I sang by myself. In other words when I left the group I was just quitting and not singing anymore, okay? They said, "You signed a contract stating that you were going to be a single act." I didn't want to do that. So I ended up recording something called "Picture Me And You" and the other side was "I Love The Life I Live And Live The Life I Love" that they wrote for me. I don't know if you remember a song called "Hungry For Love" by the Sam Remo Strings.

Q - I don't remember that.

A - Okay. It was a hit. That was my band track, my band track to my B-side. That was what I did back then. I started writing and then of course things weren't going our way. Members were not working together like we used to because we were all disappointed. We did a beach party movie. We did a movie for Columbia Pictures called Winter-A-Go-Go. The director of the movie really liked what we looked like. He said we looked like the kids next door type thing. So, he had set up a meeting with somebody. We didn't know who. When we got together, Dick Clark told us about it. He said, "Some people want to meet you." We went to this dinner and while we were there we didn't know who these people were who were dressed in suits, but we were cordial and nice to everybody. I was at the opposite end of the table and found out that we were offered seven beach party movies with Annette Funicello to be in those. One of the guys who was sitting next to one of the presidents to the production house said, "What do you think?" And our guy said, "Well, we'll have to think about it." You don't tell somebody that. So when we found out that we kind of went viral. That's when I said, "That's enough. I'm done."

Q - It was one of your band members who said, "I'll have to think about it"

A - Yes. One of our group. That puts a red flag up to them. This is a problem group when he says he has to think about it. We would've jumped on it. If I would have been on the opposite side of the table I would have said, "Yes, we'll do it." But, you live and learn. I was twenty-two when "Romeo" came out. We were kids. You don't think future. You think what's happening right now. We did an awful lot for a group that had a big hit. We were on two Dick Clark tours, one James Brown tour. James really liked our group. He was a real nice guy to work with. We did places that very few White guys get to perform.

Q - I'll get into that a little later in the interview, but you guys recorded for this label Kay-Ko. I never heard of that label.

A - (laughs) Yeah, it was a local label. There was a young guy we met that had more money than brains and he decided he was going to get a recording studio. He wanted to start managing groups. His parents created ethyl gasoline. That's where he got his money from. His name was Barry Kaysar. Apparently his dad was the inventor of ethyl gasoline back in the old days. So, he was a multi-millionaire. He got us under contract and we recorded a couple of tunes. One was "Helpless" and the other was "You Said Goodbye". Phil Castrodale sang "Helpless" and I sang "You Said Goodbye". Now, we had no idea that company was being sold to Golden World or Golden World was interested in that company and they were interested because because they wanted us. We didn't know who Golden World was. When we found out that the company had bought Kay-Ko Records we ended up going and working in the basement of Joann Bratton, the CEO of the company. We would go down the basement in her house in Detroit and all the musicians from Mowtown would be there and we'd go down and practice and go through some songs with them. We ended up meeting Bob Hamilton and Freddie Gorman who wrote "(Just Like) Romeo And Juliet". They ended up assigned to us as our writers. So, they came up with that song. We didn't care for that song to be honest with you because it was very Bubblegum when we heard it. It's not anything that we sang. Our group sang all the old Doo Wop songs. We started in '56. So, all of our singing was the old Doo Wop. When we got to "Romeo And Juliet", of course it's a piano player. You're listening to a guy that wrote the song who isn't a singer and he's singing this song to us and we're going, "I don't know if I like this song." So, we started doing some funny stuff in it and one of the things we did was that falsetto stuff. We put it in there as kind of a mocking of the song 'cause we didn't care for the song. Once we put that in there he turned around to us and said, "Oh, I like that. Leave that in" I said, "Oh, God. What's going to happen?" (laughs) See, we never heard the band track until our studio was being built in '64. Our studio was under construction. The band track was produced at United Sound here in Detroit. So, we never heard the band track. Then the following day day were going to go to Chicago and sing at RCA Victor and lay the voice tracks down. When we got to RCA it was the first time we heard the band track and I couldn't believe it. I just thought it was great. That's how we started liking the song, but original, we never cared for it.

Q - How long did it take those two guys to write "(Just Like) Romeo And Juliet"? Did you ever find out?

A - They would work on it a couple of weeks maybe. Most of it was pretty much done when we heard it. The words were there and they might have changed a word here and there, but not really that long. They were good writers. Freddie did "Mr. Postman". He was one of the writers. He wrote that. And he was a postman. (laughs) Freddie Gorman and Bob Hamilton were very good writers for us. They were very good teachers because none of us had the ability to read music. We were just basic talent. We learned from the streets. We didn't know what key were in. We couldn't tell you anything about really getting into music. And they really helped us. We always surprised them with our harmony. We recorded, believe it or not, about twenty-eight songs that were put on record. A lot of people don't even know we had that many.

Q - I don't know if this was before your hit record or not, but you did these sock hops with Patsy Cline, Jackie Wilson, Jerry Lee Lewis and Roy Orbison in Detroit?

A - Yes. It was Artillery Armory here on Eight Mile Road. It's kind of a big place. It was a real shock to us because when I met Patsy she was in her thirties. I really loved her voice, but I looked at her and thought she looked like one of my teachers in high school. We were kids compared to her, right?

Q - You were.

A - So, when we got to work with her she was very impressed with our group. She loved harmonies. She asked us, "Would you be interested in backing me on a record?" And we said, "Yes, definitely!" She gave us her number and she took our number. That was the year she died. Oh, she was great. Just great.

Q - Between losing the beach movies and having Patsy Cline die before you could get to record with her, you guys had some bad breaks.

A - Yeah. We were fantastic. Being on the road now, we're the one hit wonders. That's really what it's ended up being 'cause nobody plays any of our other stuff, which always bothered me. But the fact is when we recorded "(Just Like) Romeo And Juliet" and went on the road, we found we were doing more than any of these groups that had far more hits than us, that we ended up being on a lot more shows 'cause we crossed over to the Black market. Because of that we were number one on the Rhythm And Blues charts. They all thought we were Black. I don't know why, but they did. We did the Apollo Theatre in New York in 1964. We were there with The Coasters, Maxine Brown, quite a few on the show, but we went over really well there, which was really surprising.

Q - You had Sam Gordon as your personal manager and the William Morris Agency as your booking agent. You were happy then with the job both parties were doing for The Reflections?

A - Well, not as much for Sam. Sam was buying a lot of suits. (laughs) We would remark very time we'd see him. "Oh, another suit, right Sam?" (laughs)

Q - Did he manage other artists?

A - I think he had Brian Hyland and Bobby Goldsboro. We weren't too impressed with him (Sam Gordon) as much, but William Morris we were. William Morris did a lot for us. They were very nice people. They got us on a lot of shows.

Q - Were The Reflections ever on Ed Sullivan?

A - We were offered The Ed Sullivan Show, but we couldn't do it because we were already booked. Yeah, I'm telling you we missed a lot of things that we wished we could've done.

Q - Had you been on Ed Sullivan that would've led to more opportunities.

A - Oh, definitely. We did The Mike Douglas Show. We did The Lloyd Thaxton Show. We did Shivaree, Shboom. American Bandstand we were on twice.

Q - I saw a tape of your performance on one of the shows with the Go-Go girls in the background.

A - Shivaree. See, and that's another thing that was bad. In 1964 they used the same tapes over again. They didn't save tapes. They would tape over the shows so they didn't have an abundance of shows in '64.

Q - Somebody thought enough of it to save it.

A - Yes. That was around '65 when we did that. The only one that was keeping tapes was Dick Clark.

Q - Speaking of Dick Clark, did you ever see the featured dance where the kids put together a dance routine for "(Just Like) Romeo And Juliet"?

A - (laughs) Yes.

Q - I don't know if that was Dick Clark's idea, if you had any input into that...

A - No.

Q - The kids came up with that on their own?

A - Yeah. They came up with it. We laughed when we saw it.

Q - They're so serious!

A - I know it. (laughs) Terrible dance.

Q - They don't look like they're having fun.

A - I was laughing when they put their foot out. (laughs) What the heck?

Q - There's no happiness in what they're doing.

A - No, no.

Q - Dick Clark smiled and applauded. He liked it.

A - Yeah. There's so many things I can honestly talk about. We opened for Ray Charles here in Michigan. We did a nice show for him and he gave us a lot of compliments. Ray Charles to me was one of the icons, the guy that you want to meet, the guy that you want to be on the stage with. Opportunities do that here in Detroit. We did another show with Don Rickles where we were his opening act. Don was just the greatest. Just the nicest guy. He loved our group. He was going to Atlantic City after he was out here and he said, "I want you guys to open for me in Atlantic City. I'll have my manager call you." I said, "Oh, great." So, we waited for the call and then his manager called and said, "Listen, he owes you and he's going to get you to do it again." I guess Tony Danza lost his TV show and they were friends and Tony called him and asked if he could open for him. Tony has more clout than we do. I understand that. No problem. We left with a good taste in our mouth, meeting a guy like him and hearing him talk about us. He went onstage when he started his act and put fifteen minutes of his act talking about us. Don apologized and said he would get with us, but his health went real bad.

Q - The follow-up to "(Just Like) Romeo And Juliet" was "Just Like Columbus"?

A - Yes.

Q - And how did that do?

A - Well, it went Top 50 in the United States, but I hated it. It was so much like "Romeo". We didn't want that out. We had a record, "You're My Baby And Don't You Forget It". That's the one we wanted to go out because that had a Beatle flavor, an English flavor to it. That's the one we wanted to go out, but naturally you deal with a company and they're gonna do what they're gonna do. This is when we started getting some of the things we weren't happy with. But we had no control. They controlled what they're going to put out. They put that song out and we said that song would've been good three years from now and not put it out right after "Romeo". Everybody said, "They're singing the same stuff." So, we weren't too happy with that. We had a few songs written for us that were pretty good. We had "Shabby Little Hut", written by Van McCoy. That one did pretty well. Then we had "Columbus" and that's the one that should've been out three years from "Romeo". Then we had "Poor Man's Son", which was on the cover of Record World. Us and The Supremes. It said the next record from The Reflections was going to be the biggest one of all because it was so different. There was no other song like it. We're on tour with Dick Clark and we were going to introduce the song probably midway through the tour in '64, actually '65 because we were on another tour in '65 where we introduced "Poor Man's Son". It was going over really well onstage. It was a real different kind of song. So, we were really happy that it was introduced and the crowds liked the song. Then we were getting all these write-ups about how many DJs across the United States picked it as the sleeper of the week or the year, whatever the determination was then. But they absolutely loved the song. But you couldn't buy one. You couldn't find it in the records store.

Q - Why was that?

A - We don't know. You just know that something's going on. We couldn't figure out what it was. But they didn't push it. They didn't push it at all. Nobody could figure out why the record wasn't in the stores. Remember "Five O'Clock World"?

Q - Yeah, The Vogues.

A - The Vogues recorded that song because of "Poor Man's Son". "Poor Man's Son" was the same type tune.

Q - You actually left the group in 1966. You left to do what?

A - I had to sing by myself. I had to do a song by myself because of my contract, and I did. I recorded "I Love The Life I Live" and "Picture Me And You", which I wrote. Then I just got out of the business until 1977. I joined a group in Detroit that was looking for a lead singer. Now, I wasn't singing and I didn't want to sing. The group was called The Laredos. They had a hit record in Pittsburgh, "Now The Parting Begins". They were a real good group. I've known these guys since we were singing as The Reflections. After you've been out of singing you get that itch. So, I started singing lead for them. Eventually I got John (Dean) from The Reflections. He wasn't doing anything. I said, "John, why don't you do me a favor and come to practice." (laughs) It bit him too like it bit me. So, we ended up starting to sing with these guys. And we've been singing with them ever since, but as The Reflections because their name Laredos was more local than anything. But they were a great group, they just didn't have the song.

Q - If you left The Reflections in 1966 and you didn't start singing again until 1977, what were you doing?

A - Working. I worked at Chrysler. I was there for ten years.

Q - Did you have a college degree in engineering?

A - Through the corporation. It's a different type of engineering. It's more statistical quality control engineering. It's not like an engineer that builds a ship. It's more quality oriented. What we did is take the capability studies on products that were going on the line. We were evaluating machinery, machines that were putting heads on the engine. I started out as an inspector on the line and the went to school. My boss let me go to Centerline School for quality control engineering and I first became an engineer once I got my engineer's rating. Basically that's what I did. But, it's like anything else, when you're singing and you're doing that, what would you rather do? And it certainly wasn't that. (laughs)

Q - You're saying you never broke out in a song in Chrysler?

A - Yeah, that's right. (laughs)

Official Website: www.Reflections-Music.com

© Gary James. All rights reserved.