Gary James' Interview With Don Dannemann Of
The Cyrkle



John Lennon gave them their name. They were managed by Brian Epstein, who also managed The Beatles. During the Summer of 1966 they opened for The Beatles last tour of America, which included the very last show at Candlestick Park on August 29th, 1966. In 1966, their song "Red Rubber Ball" went all the way up to number two on the Billboard charts, selling over a million copies, resulting in a Gold Record award. Another hit record followed, "Turn Down Day", which reached number sixteen on the Billboard charts. The group we are talking about is The Cyrkle. We spoke with Don Dannemann of The Cyrkle about the history of his band and the popularity the group still enjoys today.

Q - Don, before we dive into your music, you had your own production company and you were doing commercials. Are we talking national commercials?

A - Yes.

Q - Your first group was The Rhondells?

A - Yes. The Rhondells became The Cyrkle.

Q - When The Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan on February 9th, 1964, were you watching then?

A - Yes, I definitely saw them. I guess it would have been in my fraternity house.

Q - What'd you think of 'em?

A - Oh, we were major Beatles fans. We were blown away when The Beatles first appeared on the scene. We learned most of the early Beatles recordings. We, The Rhondells, did really good Beatles performances. It was due to our Beatles performance that started the ball rolling to get us to the point where we were discovered and became The Cyrkle.

Q - You were playing a club on Labor Day in 1965 in Atlantic City. What was the name of the club?

A - The Alibi Bar on South Carolina Avenue, along the Boardwalk in Atlantic City.

Q - Nat Weiss walked into the club and I assume he introduced himself to you guys. Had you heard of Nat Weiss? Did you know who he was?

A - No. Total stranger.

Q - Did you think this guy was the real deal?

A - No.

Q - That's probably because you've heard so many times in your life, "We'll get you a record deal, kid."

A - Yes. We had people all through The Rhondells history come up and say, "Oh, we can get you a deal. Blah, blah, blah." So, we didn't believe it. We were polite to him. He certainly seemed like a nice guy, but we did not believe it.

Q - How much time went by before Nat Weiss told you he would introduce you to Brian Epstein?

A - A few months.

Q - At that time in Rock 'n' Roll history, Brian Epstein was probably the most famous, important and influential manager in the world.

A - Yeah. Well, what happened was when he introduced himself to us, he said, "My name is Nat Weiss and I'm a matrimonial lawyer and I'm a good friend of Beatles manager Brian Epstein, and he and I are forming a management company in the U.S. I think you're really good. Stay in touch. Maybe we can get something going." So, we thought, "Baloney." That was right at the end of the Summer of 1965. Now, the four of us, basically kind of went our separate ways at the end of the Summer. I went home to East Chester, New York and I was working for my Dad in the sheet metal company that he had, a small manufacturing sheet metal company, waiting to get into the Coast Guard Reserve. Tom Dawes, vocalist and bass player, had about six months to go with Lafayette (College). Marty Fried, drummer, had a year to go, and keyboard play Earl Pickens want on to the University Of Chicago Med. School. So, during the Fall I would drive out to Lafayette from East Chester, my parent's home where I was living, and Tom and Marty and I would play as a trio still at fraternities. During the Fall I thought to myself, "This guy says he knows Brian Epstein. Why don't I jut give him a call?" He gave me his card. I kept his card. So, I called him. He remembered me immediately and he said, "Hey Don, oh, thank you for calling. You guys were really good. How about you come down to the City (New York City)," 'cause East Chester is a suburb of New York. It's easy to get in. He gave me an Upper Eastside address. He said come to such-and-such a place at such-and-such a time, "And I'll introduce you to Brian." So I go, "Really? Okay." Anyway, I took a buddy of mine and we went down. It was one of those side streets on the Upper Eastside of Manhattan, small building. It was a walk-up building. We walked up to the second floor where there was a party. We stood around. We didn't know anybody that was there. Finally, Nat came in. I walked up to him. He said, "Oh yeah, Don. C'mon. Come and follow me." So, I follow Nat back down the stairs and there is a limo parked right on the curb, right outside the building. And Nat, in a very gracious way, beckons me into the limo and sits me down. And sure enough, I am sitting right in front of Brian Epstein. We were such huge Beatles fans, we knew there was no question I was sitting in front of Brian Epstein. So now Nat introduces me to Brian Epstein and before I tell you the introduction, I need to back up for one second and give you a sense of my level of talent. My level of talent is that I think I'm a pretty good, Light Rock vocalist. That's my voice. It is pretty good. It's not fabulous. And my guitar playing is pretty good. I'm not the best guitar player in the world. I don't come up to the grand players of Rock 'n' Roll. I'm not them, but I can play a pretty decent guitar. I'm a pretty good singer and musician, but Nat introduces me and I actually have a little video tape in my head of this moment 'cause it was so meaningful. Nat introduces me. I'm sitting right across from Brian, and he goes, "Brian Epstein I would like you to meet Don Dannemann, one of the finest musicians I know." So hence, you know why I needed to clarify what I think of myself. (laughs) That is how Nat introduced me. Of course I'm trying to be cool, a little gulp back and forth. There were a few nice exchanges like, "Wow Brian! So great to meet you. We're such great Beatle fans. It was nice to meet Nat. It would be great if we could get something going." And Brian, who from Day One having met him, was always a gentleman. Spoke very gently. He sort of did it like, "Oh, yes Don. Very lovely to meet you. Nat has spoken very highly of you. Stay in touch and perhaps we can get something going." Anyway, a few more pleasantries and Nat basically opened the door and with the same hand gesture he beckoned me out of the limo and closed the door. I'm standing on the street now with my mouth open. Also, I have another little video tape picture in my head. This time the camera is actually behind me. It's looking up the block. So, you see me kind of silhouetted from behind and the limo just slowly drives off. It's an empty side street. No traffic. Just disappears beyond the lights and faded to black. That's my video of my moment meeting Brian Epstein. So, it was a mind-blowing experience.

Q - What was the name of this management company that Nat Weiss and Brian Epstein were forming?

A - Nemporer.

Q - I thought it might have been NEMS Enterprises.

A - There was a NEMS I think in there. I forget exactly who was what. The actual company that we signed with was called Nemporer.

Q - That also became a record label distributed by CBS, right?

A - Down the road there was Nemporer Records. Now, The Cyrkle was on Columbia and up until the time we broke up we remained on Columbia.

Q - I would assume that The Cyrkle got the record deal with Columbia on the strength of Brian Epstein's name, or did you have to send in a demo tape or audition for someone?

A - Well, we definitely auditioned. I know we auditioned several times and I don't remember all of them, but I do remember that we heard after a little bit of back and forth stuff that Columbia was interested and a young producer named John Simon, who became our producer, was interested. And that was the beginning of the Columbia Records contract.

Q - And that was for how long?

A - I don't know. I didn't pay a lot of attention. I should have. They put papers in front of us and we signed them.

Q - Without asking for a lawyer to review them?

A - Yeah. I don't believe we ever had a lawyer look at them. We just signed them.

Q - How long did it take you to record the album, "Red Rubber Ball"?

A - Well, the recording process started somewhere in the Fall and went into the Winter and then it stopped. So, let me just back up for a second. "Red Rubber Ball" was found by bandmate Tommy Dawes, and he was basically hanging around Green Village. He met a guy named Barry Kornfeld, who had a publishing company with Paul Simon, and that's where Tommy heard a demo of "Red Rubber Ball" and brought it to us 'cause we were looking for material to record. I do remember when we all heard it we all thought, "Yeah. Cute. Let's try it." I also remember rehearsing it and trying to figure out who's going to do what, where, how's it going to go. My sense of "Red Rubber Ball", if I can sort of skip around a little bit, when "Red Rubber Ball" became a hit, I thought, "Wow! It's a cute song. I'm so thrilled that it became a hit. That's amazing! We actually have a hit record!" But I never thought of it as a major work. I thought it was a cute song that became a hit. In recent years, in The Cyrkle revival that I'm now a part of, we get to meet people. When we play you get to meet people at Meet And Greets, especially afterwards. I am blown away by how many people come and tell me what "Red Rubber Ball" meant to them. "Red Rubber Ball" basically in my understanding now actually was and continues to be a major, feel-good anthem of the '60s. People have all kinds of stories they tell me about it. I mean, it goes from, well, the usual thing: "Red Rubber Ball was my first 45. I played it to death. It's all scratchy. I still have it. Can you sign it?" That's kind of normal. But just to give you a few other ones: A gentleman came up to me and shook my hand. He goes, "Thank-you." I looked at him. "Okay. You're welcome. What for?" He said, "I want you to know that 'Red Rubber Ball' got me though my divorce. It was such a nasty divorce. 'Red Rubber Ball' was so uplifting. I would get up in the morning and it would be on the air. I think it's gonna be alright. Yeah, the worst is over now. The morning sun is shining like a red rubber ball. It really helped." It was really a nice thing. Another guy said, "I lost my virginity to 'Red Rubber Ball'." And the most poignant one, which when it first happened I thought, "Wow!", but it happens regularly, is Vietnam vets. One particular guy, the first time I remember very distinctly, a guy, he's wearing a Vet hat. He said, "I want you to know that we had a little battery operated tape recorder in 'Nam. 'Red Rubber Ball' was on it and it got us though so many battles. Thank-you." We teared up and hugged. What I had found was, just as I had said, "Red Rubber Ball" is a premiere feel-good anthem of the '60s, recognized by thousands of people. I am so honored to have been the voice of it. The fact that I will never get to meet most of these people, but that I got to meet some now and we share, and it's been an amazing experience.

Q - After "Red Rubber Ball" became such a hit is when Brian Epstein invited you to join The Beatles' 1966 American tour. If "Red Rubber Ball" hadn't become a hit, do you still think you'd have been asked to do that tour?

A - Well of course we will never know the answer, but my guess is no. They needed some notoriety to have that happen.

Q - When did you first meet The Beatles? Was it on the plane on that '66 tour?

A - Yes. The first meeting was on the plane.

Q - I've been told that you just couldn't walk up to any of The Beatles and introduce yourself. You had to wait for them to approach you. Is that true or not?

A - They had a little compartment built in the back of the plane. So it was a regular commercial airliner with a wall in the back for them. The first flight where we were going from New York to Chicago, we had not met them, even though "Red Rubber Ball" was a big hit and kind of on its way up. We're a band of some notoriety at this point. But we were huge Beatles fans as much as anybody else was and we couldn't wait to meet them. So, we're on the plane, looking at the wall. The Beatles are behind the wall and I am sitting next to bandmate Tommy Dawes and Nat Weiss, three rows on one side of the plane towards the front. We keep looking back and we keep looking back. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Finally, well into the flight, the door opens and there's Paul and then it closes. It's only Paul. Now Paul is now shaking hands with people. He's way towards the back. We're looking, trying not to stare, but we're looking. And you could see that Paul is a very cordial, jovial guy. You could see that he's meeting some people for the very first time, the way he's being introduced, and others you can see he knows. "Oh, how are you? Good to see you again." That kind of thing. When he finally gets to us, Nat Weiss, who knows him of course through Brian, he now introduces us. So, it's basically like this: "Paul McCartney meet Don Dannemann of The Cyrkle." I'm sitting there and I get to shake his hand and he looks down and says, "Oh yeah. It's great to meet you guys. I know you got a couple of hits going and that's great. We love you guys and we're so looking forward to playing." A couple of little niceties back and forth. "Paul McCartney meet Tom Dawes of The Cyrkle," and it was the same thing. A little back and forth. "Okay now guys, we'll see you." He goes back and disappears behind the door. Then Tommy and I spent the whole rest of the flight discussing every word that got said in that silly little conversation, as in, "Why couldn't we have been cooler?" (laughs)

Q - But, who initiated that rule that you couldn't talk to a Beatle? They would have to be the ones to make the first move?

A - There was no rule. Nobody came up and said, "Don't you dare go up to The Beatles!" It was nothing like that.

Q - And nobody did.

A - Well, they were behind the wall. Remember, they were not a part of the group. They were behind the wall, so you'd be either invited in or they had to come out. The first flight, only Paul came out.

Q - And I would assume as the tour continued on, the rest of the guys started to come out.

A - Yeah, it got to be looser, but we didn't actually get to meet them until it was the third concert where we actually got invited back to the dressing room before the concert. I don't remember what city it was, but I do remember it was the third concert.

Q - How did The Cyrkle go over in front of The Beatles audiences?

A - Well, we were very nervous about that. We were not nervous about our performance. We knew we could do fine, but we wondered if they were going to yell "Get off the stage! We want The Beatles!". And it was exactly the opposite. We were so thrilled. I'm still remembering. I can still picture in Chicago, which was the first concert, certain things kind of stand out as distinct from the overall view. When they announced us, big cheers! We run up on stage to big cheers. Everything we played was well received. The applauded. It was great. So yeah, it was good.

Q - At that time, had your second single come out, "Turn Down Day"?

A - Yes. "Turn Down Day", although it sounds very goovy and simple and it just flows on through. "Turn Down Day" is actually a fairly complicated song. An average guitar player who plays Rock 'n' Roll can't simply hear it, pick up a guitar and play it. You actually have to think about it, look at the chords, go in, analyze it, whatever. Even to the point that I, the singer and guitar player on "Turn Down Day", am obviously involved in the recording, after some years went by, after the group broke up, I didn't pay any attention to old Cyrkle stuff. So, a lot of time went by. It was sort of past. I got into my commercial career. At a certain point, and I couldn't give you the exact time frame, I had an occasion to want to play with people and play "Turn Down Day". I had to learn it as if it were the first time. I thought, "I can't believe I don't remember how to play this," and I had to listen to it and slowly go through it and say, "Oh, that's that. Okay." It's not hard to play once you learn it, but you just can't pick it up and play it. You have to learn it.

Q - I've read that on this '66 tour it was the first time that John started using heroin. I don't mean shooting up, I mean snorting it. Did you see anything different in his moods or attitude from one gig to the next?

A - No. John was his usual self. The thing that I get a kick out of John that I remember is that he would every once in awhile come up in his little granny glasses and look over them and say, "Oh, guys have you learned to spell yet?" Just kidding around about our Cyrkle spelling. So no, I don't have any personal indication that all of a sudden he went from straight to heroin.

Q - And John is the one who came up with the spelling for the name of your band!

A - Yes. When we found out our new name, the circumstance of that was we were in the studio in the early days of being managed by Brian and our Columbia Records contract. Brian was in the studio that day and he came up to me. We were still The Rhondells, looking for a new name. And he handed me a business card. I looked at it. It said Brian Epstein on it. He said, "Oh, no, no Don. Turn it over." I turned the card over and I see scribbling on the back and I said, "Brian, what am I reading?" He said, Don, this is your new name, The Cyrkle. Notice the funny spelling. Cyrkle. Back when I was in Britain I asked the boys." He said "the boys" kind like in quotes. He always referred to The Beatles as "the boys." "I asked the boys, 'we have a new American group and we're looking for a name. Anyone have any ideas?' It was John who came up with The Cyrkle with the funny spelling. You know how John thinks with his mind and all that." So, I now had in my hand Brian Epstein's business card with John Lennon's writing on the back. The Cyrkle and I, master of keeping stuff that I am not, that card was probably in the trash the next day and I can't imagine what that would be worth today if I still had the card.

Q - That would be worth a lot of money.

A - Yes.

Q - That's part of Pop music history.

A - Plus the sentimental value of it. If I had it, I would never sell it anyway. But it's just, "Okay, that's our new name." In the trash.

Q - The sentiment at the time was probably The Beatles would not last. They were a fad. That was the thinking of the day.

A - I don't think I thought of it one way or the other. I just know that we were very admiring of every new step The Beatles took. I'm still remembering when "Sgt. Pepper" came out, we were blown away like everyone else was.

Q - There is no other band in Rock 'n' Roll history that made the changes in their music and look as The Beatles did.

A - Oh, yeah. It's an amazing phenomenon.

Q - When Brian died in 1967, you guys folded, but The Beatles didn't fold. They went on. Couldn't you have gotten another manager and continued on?

A - Well, we were still managed by Brian's partner Nat Weiss. But the way I look at what happened to us is when we had "Red Rubber Ball" and "Turn Down Day" in that time period of meeting Nat, getting the contract, getting that whole thing happening, even to the point when "Red Rubber Ball" became a hit; I was in the Coast Guard Reserve Active Duty and I was actually going to miss The Beatles tour because my Active Duty was six months, which was a month too late to make the tour, and out of the blue, the government changed the six months to five months and I was able to make the tour. So my point is, I feel like we were in what I would call Andy Warhol's fifteen minutes of fame. And when you're in that fifteen minutes of fame it's kind of like everything goes right. To me, the fifteen minutes were over somewhere after The Beatles tour, into the Fall of 1966 where it was just kind of a slow demise basically of our success. We continued to record. You can listen to the later recordings. They're quite good. We actually got better in the studio. We got more sophisticated, but the magic somehow or another wasn't quite there. I'll give you a little magic talk. Somewhere in the mid '80s a small record company that handled oldies called Sun Dazed got the license from Columbia to release Cyrkle stuff. They do a lot of oldies kind of stuff. They sent me a cassette of "Here's what we're putting out. Give us a comment." Now, I hadn't listened to "Red Rubber Ball" in a really long time. Like I said, I was involved in my commercials. I had a very lovely career doing that. So, I'm now listening to "Red Rubber Ball" for the first time in a long time and I was listening to it on an airplane. I was by myself, going somewhere. I had my Walkman with headphones. I thought, "I'll give a listen to it and comment." "Red Rubber Ball" is the first thing that comes on and I was actually blown away by my perception of "Red Rubber Ball" in that it starts off, if you know it, it takes you less than half a second to know it's "Red Rubber Ball". The organ and the guitar come in together. Then I start singing and Tommy joins me. I realize, Wow! This really unique. We sound like ourselves. We don't sound like anybody else and nobody sounds like us. It is a very clear, unique sound that The Cyrkle had and I am proud to say I was big part of it. And there was a magic to it. Not only was it unique, but there was something magical about how that recording came together. Then "Turn Down Day", not quite, but close. There was something similar. There was some magic to that. Then as you go and listen to the rest of the stuff that went on and went on and went on, you can hear good recordings, good performances, good songs. Lots of good stuff, but it didn't quite get that magic. What I took from that is, and I still think this to this day, is that you can get the best performers, singers, musicians, writers, producers, studio. You can get the best of everything and decide to make a recording and what you can guarantee is it will be a really good recoding. But what you can't guarantee, no matter what, you cannot guarantee the magic that makes a good recoding into a big hit. And "Red Rubber Ball" had that, and the other stuff, not quite. So basically, it sort of kind of slowly went down and we never got that magic back. I can't tell you why. And we broke up.

Q - You and the other guys did not write "Red Rubber Ball" and "Turn Down Day", did you? They were written by other people, correct?

A - Yeah.

Q - I guess the problem might have been you never had another songwriter approach you with a song that would have been equally as distinct.

A - No. Not true. We were approached all the time with songs. We were bombarded with songs and the biggest mistake that we made was in the studio; We're in the studio one day and Simon And Garfunkel are coming out. Paul comes up to me and says, "Hey Don, we're working on an album. One of the songs on the album we're recording I think might be really good for you guys. The album is not coming out for awhile and if you want, record it as fast as you can and put it out. It'll be your song." And we listened to it and for some reason we decided at this moment we will not do it. Maybe we'll do it down the road a little bit. And that was the "59th Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)". We do that at our show now and I tell the story pretty much what just told you. I say to the audience, "We didn't do it. I'll let you decide if we made a mistake, but had we done it, it would have sounded like this," and we do now our version of "Feelin' Groovy". And you can hear a big gasp fro the audience like, "Are you kidding? You didn't do that song?" (laughs) I can't tell you why we didn't do it at the time, but we didn't.

Q - I almost forgot to ask you, did you have a favorite Beatle? When you were on The Beatles plane and Paul made his way down the aisle, greeting everyone, would it have been more meaningful to you if it had been say John or George?

A - When we first met all of them I got into a really nice conversation with George, who turned out to be a real warm, regular guy. He was very interested to hear my story. "How did you get to this point? What happened?" He was also still kind of blown away by their success. He said, "Hey, you know it's not that long ago that we were playing in clubs in Liverpool." Nice to chat with.

Q - Did Brian Epstein have any other American groups in his roster?

A - No. We were the only American group.

Q - What an honor!

A - Oh, yeah. Totally an honor. And I'll give you a little sense of that. Sometimes you know things but you don't really take 'em in. A couple of years ago we did The Flower Power Cruise. It's basically a '60s music cruise. We were one of a bunch of acts on the cruise. We were there for four days. Of those four days we actually played twice. We were introduced by Peter Asher, who of course has a relationship with The Beatles and Brian. Peter made a really big deal when he introduced us, which we knew, but you don't really think about. You hear it spoken and go, "Oh my God!" He introduced us by saying, "Brian Epstein, who had multiple English bands, but he chose only one American band, and this is The Cyrkle. Ladies and gentlemen, Brian Epstein's only American band, The Cyrkle." And it was like, "Wow!" When you hear it like that, it was very cool.

Q - So, you're doing cruise ships. Where else are you performing? Are you doing casinos? Oldies tours?

A - We have not done any casinos. We're not on tour. We don't go on tour. We don't want to go on tour. We want to go out and play maybe one, two, three nights and come home. But we have played around the country. It is always with other '60s artists. So we are usually one of several '60s artists in theatres that maybe will hold a thousand, fifteen hundred, two thousand people.

Official Website: www.TheCyrkle.com

© Gary James. All rights reserved.

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