King Harvest - Dancing In The Moonlight | The story behind the song | To...

Listen to King Harvest on Spotify

All the Best in 2017 from King Harvest!

I would like to call this post SABINE.  I do so because Rod, Eddie and I each had a special relationship with SABINE and could even say she was a favorite to each one of us.

Sabine was a dog.  I mean a dog as in an animal with four legs and a tail.   The background - when I first went to France in 1967, my then girlfriend, the brilliant and beautiful Susan Hathaway who has since passed away, came to join me there.  But while I was studying with Nadia Boulanger and working hours a day so as not to be humiliated and disgraced in both the private meetings with Mlle Boulanger and, worse, the classes where every single other student was better prepared and trained than I was. That left Susan on her own a lot.  What's not to like, on one's own in Paris, 1967?  But she became increasingly lonely and depressed.  My solution - typical shallow solution that I am good at - was to get a dog.  So, I trundled out to the country and picked up Praline, a mix of a whippet and a terrier, a dog whose running speed was something like 500 miles per hour and who was completely wild.  The priests who lived below me hated her, and Susan didn't particularly like her either. So my solution failed.  But Praline was a good dog, and when I returned to the US in the fall of 68 I brought her back and left her with my parents in the dog -friendly home in Olcott.

Then, in 1969 when I went back to Paris, the first thing I did was to go out to the SPCA ( called SPA in France - go figure) and picked up another mutt, named her Sabine on the spot and brought her home.   A week later two things happened.  First, Sabine seemed to be very ill and in fact was diagnosed to have distemper which , the vet told me, would result in death pretty quickly.  He told me that maybe, just maybe, if I fed Sabine freshly cooked warm scrambled eggs and , get this, cow's cheeks, the dog might live.   As I lived one or two blocks from the famous St. Germain covered market, getting the cows' cheeks wasn't an issue and thus I began the program for my little Sabine.

But I was back studying with Mlle Boulanger and that required 4000% or more focus.  Luckily, a solution appeared, and it was Rod Novak.  Rod, with whom I had gotten close in the late 68 semester and in early 69 when we both hung out with the SDS people, and Rod, from whom I could buy hash which I had become fond of in my first go round in Paris, had traveled to England, purchased a motorcycle which had broken down on his way to Paris, had somehow ended up in my apartment while he was planning his recovery of the bike, and was the perfect caretaker for Sabine.  Rod was really good with Sabine ( as was the string of other friends who came through town that summer of 69 ) but it was Rod who helped to save Sabine's life.  

Sabine recovered and even had a wonderful love affair with a dog named Pils, a German sheppard who lived at the Old Navy cafe on the Boulevard St Germain and who would cross the boulevard on his own each morning, somehow open the door to the courtyard at 33 rue du four where I lived on the third floor, and would come up to my door and wait for his girlfriend to go out for a morning walk.  

I digress.

Fast forward, we of King Harvest were living in a wonderful converted farmhouse in Orgeval, about 25 miles west of Paris, where we had quite a sizable walled-in garden, perfect for Sabine.  So, she had Eddie, Rod, Wells and me as her loving caretakers and had her own mansion in the countryside.  But it was Rod who really best expressed feelings for Sabine. And here's how.  Eddie and I came back to the house one night in the fall after some bike ride through the countryside. The fireplace was blazing, and someone was playing the guitar.  As we approached, it turned out to be Rod, sitting with Sabine's head resting on his lap, and singing the final lines to his song ......." and I'm a boy and you're a dog and never shall we marry".    

The Gift of The Wind - Recollections of Ed Tuleja

The Gift Of The Wind

Ronny and Rod had headed back to America. Doc and I were still living in Paris getting into becoming junkies. There were a few of us that took the stuff. It was all too easy. Anyway we figured it would be good to go down to Spain and refit a 65 foot Danish tuna boat and turn it into a sailboat for charter in the Med., sort of clean up in the Andalusian sun.  We got invited to go, I suppose, because we hung around with models and knew David Hamilton and one of his friends, Tana Kaleya and her man Viktor Kornowski, a staunch mad Russian captain and owner of the boat.

So we drove across the Pyrenees and through the orange fields and down to Javea on a point of land between Alicante and Valencia where we worked on the boat. Tony Cahill, the old drummer for the Easybeats, was our bass player then and David Montgomery on drums. Ronnie Bird, a major French rock star, was also in our unusual fellowship. We were all on the boat, refugees from Paris and too much fun.

The boat was our home for six months. We did the refit in the Spanish yard, cut the wishbone out of mahogany, one piece about six feet across. Ramon and Jesus did that. And we stepped the mast, one piece of Swedish Fire Fir, basically a large tree which was a bit too wide. Viktor called for his knife which was really a short sword, to hack away at the bottom of the mast to fit it in while the Spanish crane operator kept yelling at him to hurry up. Very dramatic. 

We got underway after a few months in Javea and sailed to the Balearics, Ibiza, Majorca, Formentera, and Formentor. The color of the water around Majorca was a blue I’d never seen before, deep and clean. We’d gauge our speed by throwing Bastos cigarettes overboard. Rough Spanish tobacco that would still burn in the water so you could watch its passage. We had a transistor radio and point it to the south for Radio Morocco or some such, exotic rock from North Africa. In the other direction we’d get Radio Luxembourg and there was north. 

With this navigation system we were soon out of food and water and looking for a port. We used alka selzer once to raise some dough, but we did have a lot of garlic and anchovies and some eggs and pasta. The eggs had mostly gone bad. Our reckoning was so far off that after sailing around not knowing where we were really we finally saw a port and thought great, we’ve made it to Marseilles finally, only it turned out to be Barcelona. We did eventually make it to Marseilles where the the Gift of the Wind sank at the dock, as I heard later. Don’t know after that.

But the Gift kept us alive. On a night of those nights after we left Javea we were sailing around Punto Umbrio, Cloudy Point, or as I liked to call it Point Lugubrious. The weather was rotten and things were breaking on board. As we rounded the point the navigation lights went out which was bad business in those waters and that weather. So risking life and limb we got up in the rigging to fix the nav lights which were kerosene and lo and behold the port light caught fire and spread to the hemp rigging. Now we had a large wooden box on the deck for holding saws, keel drills, and the various rusty bits of cable and chain we carried. Doc was up on deck with me and the others at the time and a picture that lives in my memory forever is of him staggering backward, falling into the box of saws and spiky boat parts silhouetted by the burning rigging. When he extricated himself from the tool box he muttered something appropriate and brief like, “Fuck this Shit”, and went below to smoke hashish and let the rest of us handle the mess on deck. 

By the time we reached Marseilles we were pretty happy to be alive. It was then that Doc picked up a copy of the International Herald Tribune over morning coffee and saw the ad, ”Doc and Eddie, Call Paris. You have a hit.” The International Trib was always good value – I remember one ad that said ”Mercenary for Hire – Six Wars – Five Successful. “ You have to love that sort of succinct statement. We didn’t call Paris, but the next day we noticed Jack Robinson who produced Dancing In the Moonlight, in a speedboat doing rings around the harbor trying to find us. Well, to cut the narrative short we scooted up to Paris, and eventually back to the states where we arrived just a little too late to take full advantage of our great success - making it a proper King Harvest story.

For reasons of brevity, I’ve abridged lots that went on aboard the Gift of the Wind. Probably for another place and another time.  

Christmas Eve Somewhere West of Paris and Other Sundry Recollections - Ed Tuleja

Wells Kelly had bought a Jaguar Mark VI from the Belgian Embassy. We’d been in town and were coming back to Orgeval where we lived, 30 miles out of Paris on the autoroute to the west. He was warned to put some oil in the Jag but that didn’t happen and he went screaming down the road to Orgeval. He managed to attract the attention of the police and he outran them for a while until the Jag blew up. Out of oil and he had to pull over.

 I was following at a leisurely pace in the Mercedes bus left with us by Dale Metcalf, fresh from hanging out with the Merry Pranskers and Kesey and all those guys and touring Europe with a beautiful Swedish girl. Another story. I once drove that bus to the Haute Savoie in winter with no brakes for a gig in Megeve. Another story. I used the slow drive in the Merc to smoke a a couple of hash joints, from Novak’s trip to Lebanon. Another story. And came upon Wells’ smoking Jag and the police everywhere. 

So being charitable, I pulled over to give him a ride home or pick him up at the police station. As I recall we followed the cops to the station and it being Christmas Eve, they were pretty easy on us. We had an old French tenor banjo, given to me by Jacques Higelin, and a guitar. Another story. Went inside and sang some Christmas songs for the cops and all had a pretty good yuk and they eventually cut us loose without too much drama. But the Jag never rose again.

As an afterthought I was counting the places we played in Europe, France, the Army bases in Germany with Nancy Holloway (another story), Amsterdam with Chicago Beau and Julio Finn, and on the way back Julio stole a CD of Shaft from a truckstop and we played it in the van all the way to the French border where we were pulled over by the CRS. Thus ensued being surrounded by little French cops with machine guns who recognized the Ohio license plate that the truckstop guy called in. 

In the end Julio pocketed the stolen tape, 8 track, and stowed it in the toiled cistern at the police station at the border. We were waiting under surveillance and spotlights when Julio came out and asked us derelicts huddling in the van for 50 francs which we found and he gave it to the cops and we went on. Don’t know how he did it. He was a silver tongued devil. But we got to the gig we had at the American Center about two hours late and we had to force ourselves to play out of pride.  

Also we played a great gig at the Aviano army base in northern Italy. Had to drive under a mountain to get there. I did Spain with Sammy Gaha, Tony Cahill and David Montgomery, and Steve Leach was down there then too. He’s now Seasick Steve. Another story. And Rod played The Intercontinental Beirut. That story about him hitting on the King Of Jordan’s daughter at the hotel pool until the Royal bodyguards came and intervened. Classic. 

Eduardo

How I Got To Paris by Ed Tuleja - Lead Guitarist - King Harvest

Preface: Dancing in the Moonlight was recorded in Paris in 1972.

How I Got to Paris

I had graduated from Cornell in ‘68. We had a number of bands during the four years we were all there, cover bands, blues bands, rock bands and rhythm ‘n’ soul revues. When school ended and Ronnie went to Paris to study piano with Nadia Boulanger I went down to New York City to try my luck. To make a long story short, New York chewed me up and spit me out after a few months and I hightailed it back to Ithaca to lick my wounds in familiar surroundings. 

Things were so bad for me in the city I finally had to take a job as a shipping clerk in a Methodist bookstore. Previous to this I was down to $15 so I went down to Wall Street where you could take a helicopter tour of Manhattan. I figured if I was going to be stone broke in New York, at least I’d have had a birds eye view of the scene of my non-existent prospects. The next day I saw an ad in the Times. Some fancy uptown hair salon was paying hirsute fellows like myself to come in and get the “flame cut”. So I shaved and had my hair burned off and was fit to look for work. I looked the part and landed the job in the religious bookstore. 

I used to take lunch in Central Park and on a day of these days, after my ice cream popsickle lunch, I sat down on a bench in the park and smoked a joint of “Ghetto Green” which I was growing in a pot on my balcony overlooking Tompkins Square Park. Lo and behold the skies opened up with a massive lightning storm and I got totally disoriented, not knowing east from west. I eventually made it back to the bookstore after lunch and quit. The next day there was a sniper attack and a fellow got killed a few blocks from my apartment down in the lower East Side. I left New York two days later and didn’t return for years. 

When I got back to Ithaca I started up playing again with the Del Royals for a few months when I got a letter from Ronnie urging me to come over to Paris and play some rock ’n’ roll. The sense of urgency was so intense that I got on a plane and landed in London the day after Christmas, 1969. The skies were leaden grey, the meat was grey, the vegetables were grey and I couldn’t understand a word they said. It resembled English but not strongly and travelling on the underground the exit signs all said “Way Out”. Damn right I thought to myself - way out about sums it up. I had come from America with a small case, a Les Paul Gold Top and a Fender Bassman head. 

Upon arrival in Paris none of the above made it to the carousel at the airport and I had to catch up with my sole worldly possessions at the depot in Paris. Incredibly, it was all there before me which I considered an auspicious beginning. The Promised Band was nowhere to be found however. The first three gigs I did with Ronnie in Gay Paree were not to be forgotten: a gig playing Chuck Berry songs with me on guitar and Ronnie on an old upright, a gig entertaining at the lavish residence of Delphine Seyrig, the famous star of nothing anybody can remember (fond memories of Ronnie all but passed out on Delphine’s humongous marble staircase and the German industrialist yelling at him from the top of the stairs: ”You are a good musician but you haf no humor!” ), and finally a gig where we were the third act after a maladroit magician and a truly execrable balloon player. It was the best of times.

Dancing in the Moonlight statistics

Reading thru Joel Whitburn's Top Pop Singles, we happened to notice some cool stuff about Dancing in the Moonlight. The song was on the Billboard charts for 22 weeks after it was released! Wondering how that compared with some of the great all time groups, we found out that The Beatles never had a song on longer than 19 weeks (Hey Jude). The Beach Boys only had one - Kokomo for 23 weeks. And the Rolling Stones only had one with Start Me Up, on for 24 weeks. Van Morrison ( whose song Moondance is constantly being confused with Dancing in the Moonlight) had his biggest hit with Brown-Eyed Girl which stayed on the charts for 16 weeks.