Recollections: George Olliver and The Mandala
By: Erick Nelson
Last Updated: April 16, 2002
My First Encounter with the Mandala
In 1967 I was in my first half-decent band,
with an outstanding guitar player, Bob Sexton. We liked the Rascals and
Paul Revere and the Raiders, and played a lot of Chuck Berry type rock 'n roll.
I
was
still in high school. We were booked for one of those Battle of the Bands
that was so prevalent in the late 60's; this one at the Hullabaloo in Hollywood
(later, the Aquarius theatre). We were excited because all the big-time
groups played here. The stage had a revolving circular platform, so that
several bands could set up at the same time. Turns out we lost the Battle,
because whoever brought the most friends would win the vote and we didn't
bring any friends! This was a Sunday afternoon. After it was over,
we decided to hang around and hear the "real" band that was coming on.
Looked like they had a lot of cool equipment and would probably be good. The lights went out and some announcer said "On
the first day was born ..." and the drummer started playing a solo. He had
a shaggy Beatle haircut - blond, almost white hair. Did great stuff.
We thought - Wow, pretty good. Then we hear "On the second day ... " and
the bass player appears, playing a fretless bass! I had never seen that
before - he just cooked. Then the guitar player - I remember his sound as
really brittle, electric, and fast. I look over at Sexton, and he says
"not too bad ..."
The Hammond B3 player - now they were just smokin'! His B3 (as I had noticed back stage), was cut down on the audience side, so it actually tilted so you could see the keys. The guy really got into playing it, so that he put his hand to his face like it was killing him. The B3 just screamed. By now - I've got goose bumps up and down my arms. The band is playing together, and I'm thinking "Gosh, I wonder what's going to happen next!!"
All the guys are wearing these red and white striped suits, with black shirts and white ties. Normally, you'd think they looked goofy, but not when they played like this. And then "On the fifth day was born ... " and this Greek god guy with blond hear comes out, wearing that same striped suit, and the first thing you hear is a Sly Stone / James Brown scream. "Ahgggggg" - one whole note above the note he winds up on - I look over at Sexton again, and by now we're just grinning at each other. I have no idea what song they started with. They did Sam and Dave things like Hold On, I'm Coming; and Knock on Wood by Eddie Floyd. Songs that are now R&B standards, but were new and current at the time (it was the first time I ever heard Knock on Wood).
If they had just played about seven songs and gone home, they would have been the best band I had ever heard (including those that played at the Hullabaloo). But - between songs they just never quit playing. George Olliver, the lead singer, would start talking about the Five Steps to Soul. Well, here I am with my girlfriend and the guys in my band, and there's no way I'm going to participate, claps my hands, get up and dance - nothing. But somehow he gets the audience to "put your hands together", then to stand up and dance along. And he's got some kind of message. He's saying that people are too afraid of each other, that they're living in little bubbles, can't reach out to each other. So they can't really love each other. They need to learn the Five Steps to Soul.
Between each song, the message starts coming across, and he's got us in the palm of his hand. He says drugs won't solve it, laws won't solve it. Only coming together will solve it. I don't remember any details of his "message" - it was all visceral, general, ... and overpowering. After maybe 40 minutes of this, he's got people coming up on stage to "testify" - that is, to dance. Every song is better than the last. Olliver is dancing like James Brown. Huge strobe lights come on across the stage. It's the first time I've ever seen or heard of THAT. He swings the microphone around in a huge circle (a move later to become a rock staple) and it looks frozen in various positions because of the strobe. Now, as they run around the stage, the striped uniforms with black shirts takes on a strange effect as the strobe light dominates.
Well, you can't strobe forever, so they wind it up with some frenzied song - people are rushing the stage, it's becoming actual pandemonium. Olliver throws himself off the stage into the crowd, and people are ripping at his clothes. I see body-guard type guys - BIG guys - rushing out, knocking people's hands off him, pulling him out of the frenzy onto the stage. During all this, the band is going for broke, just pounding. As soon as they get him off stage, the band does a dramatic, but quick, ending. And boom - they're off the stage.
The lights come up, and you see tables turned over, people strewn on the ground, picking themselves up and dusting themselves off, saying "Man, what was that!"
Ongoing
We went home exhausted. We talked about nothing but this experience for days. Naturally, we were naive and hadn't seen all of the best acts in the world - from our high-school dance orientation, this was like playing ball with Michael Jordan. But later, I saw plenty of great groups - Blood Sweat and Tears, the Rascals, Stevie Wonder, Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt - and they couldn't tie the shoes of these guys. It was trying to compare a soundtrack to the whole movie. What they did was a larger dimension, a different thing.
The Mandala came back to Hollywood a few more times, and by then had a following. We went every chance we got. We had a sax playing friend who was a James Brown fanatic, and after taking him he eventually agreed that these guys were even better than James Brown. THAT'S how good they were. One time we went to hear them at the Hullabaloo, and after they rocked the place as usual, the Grass Roots had to come out and follow them. The Grass Roots had the number 3 hit single in the U.S., Live for Today, and when they came to play they sounded like Mickey Mouse. The place went nuts. The audience booed them off the stage! I actually saw some people taking one of those small round cocktail tables and pounding it upside down on another one.
Later, we went to see our heroes as usual, and a different lead singer came out. Roy Kenner, turns out it was. He screamed, he danced, he boogalooed, he did it all - he was good, but it wasn't the same. He just didn't seem like he believed it; he didn't have the spark. We went home halfway through the set, crushed.
Their Influence on Me
As time passed, I pretty much forgot about those guys - went to college, did new things, played in bands. But, in the back of my mind, I knew that music can be used to communicate to people. It can be an experience - it can motivate, challenge, encourage, inspire in the truest sense. It can be more than do a song, say "thank you very much" and tune your guitar, do a song, say "thank you very much" and tune your guitar, do a song, go home. In the depths of my heart, I wished I could be a part of something like that. I knew I couldn't sing like that, or be the out-front guy, but maybe I could help out in some way.
I became a Christian in college - by this I mean that I had an experience of the real Jesus and gave my life to him the best I knew how - and as I struggled with my purpose in life I often thought about how George had shown me something special. And I resolved that I would indeed become an integral force of an effort like that - use music to reach out to people and change their lives.
One evening in 1971 a friend of mine brought me to Calvary Chapel and I saw a group called Love Song doing exactly that! They certainly didn't have the flash of the Mandala; but they had a better message. And it seemed real when they sang about it. When they finished and Chuck Smith had given a Bible Study, he calmly asked if anybody wanted to give their hearts and lives to Jesus Christ - and if they did to stand to their feet. I had never seen an "altar call" before, and I clearly remember thinking to myself, "Yeah, right, like somebody's going to actually do that." And as I looked around I saw maybe twenty or thirty teenagers and young adults stand gladly to their feet - that was over 10% of the total audience. I thought to myself, "these Love Song guys are really doing what I've been wondering about" - and I thought maybe I could help them, carry their equipment, anything - just be a part of this wonderful thing.
Soon after, I joined one of the Maranatha groups, Selah, and the rest is well-documented history. In my ten years of involvement in what became Contemporary Christian Music, I played over 1,000 concerts. If the average audience was 500 (I played really small and really large concerts, so it's impossible to average out), that would be half a million people. I've seen literally thousands dedicate their lives to Jesus. I know that the music has touched the lives of many more.
And Now
Since the World Wide Web was kindly invented by Tim Berners-Lee, my computer has been connected to more and more resources. As far back as 1995, I would sort of idly sit around doing Alta Vista searches for various people as they came to mind, as well as "vanity searches" for my own name. Never found anything about The Mandala. But some time around the first of the year 2002, I did a "Mandala" search, and a "George Olliver" search, and I found out that George is living in Toronto, and he's been playing all these years! I see some pages that give details about the careers of the Mandala band members (below), and I even come to a page that has an mp3 of George singing "Get Ready" at a live concert in Nov 2001. And he sounds the same! But at the end of the song, he mentions something about a "spectacular event" that's coming soon. I have no idea whether he's talking about the opening of a new shoe store around the corner or the second coming of Jesus, or something in between. I figure, Hey, maybe this guy is a Christian now.
So, naturally, I send out emails to a few people who are in the biz and wind up with George Olliver's phone number. I wish I had his email address, because I want to write to him. But, having his phone number I dial it up and leave three messages on his answer phone. Gushing. Embarrassing myself. Now I'm a groupie. Darn! I figure I'm never going to hear back from him, and that I've really presented myself poorly this time. But on April 11 I am surprised to get a package in the mail with a nice letter and two CD's. He says yes he is a born again Christian, and is starting to do concert tours. If I have any contacts, let him know!
I've heard his CD's. If I were to base everything just on the recordings, I'd put him right up there with old friends Darrell Mansfield, Bryan Duncan, Bob Carlisle, and Denny Correll. But the actual music is just 10% of the total package. George says that he's got the energy and commitment he had in the olden days, and that's good enough for me.
Now, what are the odds that he can move people, with the message of and about Jesus, in much the same way that he did before? If the Mandala were only half as powerful as I remember, and if George is only half as charismatic as he was then, then his presentation would still smoke almost everything I've ever seen. And now he's got a better message!
I've been blown away by Andrae'; entertained, amused, and enlightened by Larry and Randy; deeply moved by good friend Bob Bennett; awestruck by the songs "Lean on Me" by Kirk Franklin and Crystal Lewis and "Welcome to our World" by Chris Rice. I have heard absolutely the most convincing presentations of the gospel by Harold Brinkley, Cameron Harriot, Chuck Smith, Tom Skinner, Greg Laurie, and John Warwick Montgomery.
I've just got to hear what George has to offer, and my money says that he's in that company.
And YOU
If you know of opportunities to minister in big or small ways, let George know. If you hear him in concert, tell me all about it! ericknel@comcast.net - or write to:
George Olliver
c/o Hunter-Hughes Productions
42 Flint Crescent
Whitby, Ontario (Canada) L1R 1J9
Information
The Band Members
George Olliver (vocals)
Domenic Troiano (guitar) - later: James Gang, Guess Who, Joe Cocker
Pentti "Whitey" Glan (drums) - later: Lou Reed, Alice Cooper
Don Elliot (bass) - Lou Reed, (current) Melvins
Joey Chirowski (keyboards) - later: Alice Cooper, Peter Gabriel
Quotes
The Mandala. "This most influential of early Canadian bands was fronted, at the time, by George Olliver, and, later by Roy Kenner, but most of the musicians focused on guitarist Domenic Troiano and drummer Whitey Glann. Their blue-eyed soul crusade was the sound of Toronto at the time, and they were among the first Canadian bands to tour nationally." - Events in Canadian Rock, March
"Toronto has had a number of great blue eyed soul guys, big 60's R+B town, and George is one of those guys. Great voice in that David Clayton Thomas tradition." - email forwarded to me from Ron Proulx, Toronto, Independent Music Supervisor for Filmed Entertainment; winner of several awards.
"The Toronto, Ontario, band made a considerable impression as a live act in Canada and the States in 1967. Their music was described perfectly by Lilian Roxom as "screaming white hot Southern gospel-type soul". Their album was one of the best soul LPs by white musicians but their songs were too complicated to become big hits. Troiano wrote, arranged and produced all the tracks, except Love-itis, which was recorded in New York and produced by Arif Mardin. Although their original vocalist George Olliver, who left before their album was recorded, was considered a better singer, Roy Kenner is not bad either ... " - BorderlineBooks.com
(Re. George's later band, Natural Gas) "A horn-rock band formed in 1968 with the ambition to incorporate rock, soul, jazz and pop in their music. The singer George William Olliver (who plays organ, too, on the instrumental track Tribute To Rubber Boots) was in the early (1967) Mandala line-up, so much praised by Lilian Roxon in her Rock Encyclopaedia. " - BorderlineBooks.com
"Blues and soul music has been popular in dancehalls and night clubs in Canada for the last 30 years. The most significant rhythm and blues hit came in 1968 when Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers released Does Your Mama Know About Me on the prestigious Motown label. Taylor, the vocalist, and his band, which included Tommy Chong, now of the Cheech and Chong comedy team, had been regulars in Vancouver clubs such as the Elegant Parlour and the Shanghai Junk, while in Toronto, the Blue Note throbbed to the sound of The Majestics, Jon and Lee and The Checkmates and Mandala, featuring the rambunctious singer George Olliver." - Canadian Entertainment web site.
"Toronto was a soul-fixated town in the 60s and
boasted literally dozens of blue-eyed soul bands, complete with matching suits,
large horn sections, etc. One mutant exception was R&B-psych band The Mandala,
a five piece fronted by a wicked showman named George Olliver, who could
literally make hundreds of teenybopper girls swoon in ecstasy simply by removing
a white glove, one finger at a time, and tossing it into the crowd. He was later
replaced by Roy Kenner. The band also featured guitarist Domenic Troiano [The
Guess Who, The James Gang, several solo albums], and a rhythm section and
keyboardist who went on to record extensively with Alice Cooper, Lou Reed
and a number of others." - Spectropop
Links
More Information about the Mandala:
| Band | http://acmi.canoe.ca/JamMusicPopEncycloPagesM/mandala.html |
| Guitar player: | http://www.geocities.com/domenic_troiano/guess.html |
| Canadian rock history | http://bodzie.freeservers.com/history/mar.html |