Since 2005 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place.
In August I said I thought the Secret History of Chicago Music might be running out of 1960s garage bands to cover. I’ve been a fan of the Rooks for ages, for instance, but I’d given up on writing a story because I couldn’t reach any former members to fill in the gaps in my info. I should’ve known better!
I owe this installment of Secret History to my compatriot in all things Illinois music, Chris Young of the amazing blog Downstate Sounds. Young is great at tracking down old music makers, and he found Rooks drummer Loren Charles for a post he published this February. That post contains the bulk of the research in this piece, and many thanks to Young for giving me the green light to use it! We’ve corresponded for years, and this summer we finally got to meet and talk shop down in Bloomington at Reverberation Vinyl—which is run by another Illinois music historian, John Anderson, who’s likewise a real mensch.
The Rooks started in late 1964 or early 1965 in the Chicago suburbs, with members hailing from Berwyn, Justice, Elmhurst, Melrose Park, and LaGrange. The band initially consisted of Tony Pietrini (vocals, harmonica), Jeff Pranno (lead guitar), Steve McGreer (rhythm guitar), Billy Haack (bass), and Pranno’s cousin Loren Charles, aka Loren Charles Pranno or Loren Raphael (drums).
Garage rock was riding high on the charts in 1966, and local group the Shadows of Knight scored several hits that year—including raw covers of songs by two bands coincidentally from Belfast, Ireland: Them’s “Gloria” and the Wheels’ “Bad Little Woman.”
The Rooks were definitely coming from a similar place, and when the Sundazed reissue label re-pressed their first single in 2006, Pranno explained their influences on the back cover. “We were doing Them, Kinks, Yardbirds and Rolling Stones,” he said. “We did stuff that we liked off of the albums; not necessarily the most popular records on the radio. We did ‘Rosalyn’ and ‘Big City’ which were Pretty Things songs. And Them, of course we did ‘Mystic Eyes’ and ‘Gloria.’”
Such was the popularity of garage rock that in 1966 the Rooks signed to Mercury Records without a single release under their belts, leapfrogging over the smaller labels where bands usually got their starts.
“Charles remembers the early recording session(s) being done at Sound Studios in the Carbide & Carbon Building in downtown Chicago (230 N. Michigan Ave),” Young wrote at Downstate Sounds. “Incredibly, a photo of two of the band members in the studio ran in the Sunday magazine of the Chicago Sun-Times on July 24, 1966 as part of an article about the ‘Chicago Sound.’”
For their first single, the Rooks recorded the propulsive protopunk number “A Girl Like You,” written by Pranno and Charles; to my ears, its nasty, distorted lead riff recalls Them’s “I Can Only Give You Everything,” which was covered by many teens bands of the day, including locals the Little Boy Blues. Charles says he was inspired to write that riff (he could also play guitar) by the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction,” and the B side is a cover of the Stones’ “Empty Heart.”
This wonderfully savage single remains one of the most sought-after to come out of the Chicagoland garage-rock scene—Mercury dropped the band without releasing it as anything other than a white-label promo. I frequently mention how much money these old releases can fetch from collectors today, but an original copy of “A Girl Like You” has never been sold for any price through the Discogs marketplace.
Charles blames the single’s failure on lack of promotion from Mercury, and he points out that the label didn’t coordinate with the band’s fan club (run by Carol Kedzior) to whip up supportive calls to radio stations that played it on the air. He also suspects that the Troggs’ similarly named ’66 smash, “With a Girl Like You,” made it tougher for the Rooks to get traction.
Young posted a promotional photo of the band from this period, captioned “Mercury Recording Stars,” but that turned out to be purely aspirational.
Given how much the Rooks loved rock from the UK, though, 1966 was a great year for them in other ways: they opened for the Dave Clark Five on July 4 in Madison, Wisconsin, and for Herman’s Hermits and the Animals at Chicago’s International Amphitheatre on July 31. The band also gigged in local clubs such as the Hut, the Wild Goose, the Cellar, Surf’s Up, and the Gospel Zone, and in 1967 they were booked at the World Teenage Show at Navy Pier.
This ten-day summer festival featured national headliners, among them a young Neil Diamond, west-coast fuzz-psych band the Electric Prunes, and sublime surf-pop band the Yellow Balloon. “The Rooks were scheduled to play two days (June 24th & 25th) which included opening for Dino, Desi & Billy,” Young wrote. That underrated pop trio featured Desi Arnaz Jr. and Dean Martin’s son Dean Paul.
After the Mercury recordings, McGreer left the Rooks to focus on school. He was replaced on rhythm guitar by John Brian Szmagalski, who’d been playing in an apparently undocumented group called the House of Blue Light (no idea if they were named after the song or the reputedly haunted mansion in Indianapolis). In 1967, Pietrini quit and was replaced by Tom Engel, a friend of Haack’s who’d been in local band the Henchmen.
“A rehearsal/demo tape from August 9, 1967 captures Engel and the Rooks working on a few covers together: The Left Banke’s ‘She May Call You Up Tonight’, Them’s rendition of ‘Turn On Your Lovelight’ and The Who’s ‘Substitute.’” The Rooks’ demo of “Substitute” survives (Young has posted it to YouTube, along with several others), and it’s a real charmer.
The next month, in September ’67, the Rooks’ manager Jerry Young (Chris Young’s dad) opened a northwest-side club called the Spectrum, in the space at 6684 N. Oliphant formerly occupied by the Bat-Cave. The Rooks were one of the first bands to play at the Spectrum, but within the month they’d decided to change management. “The Chicago Tribune reported on October 6th that Michael de Gaetano, manager of the group The Faded Blue, had taken on two more Chicago-area bands, The Sons Of Adam and The Rooks,” Young wrote. (The Faded Blue appear in the classic 1967 Herschell Gordon Lewis exploitation film Blast-Off Girls.)
Later in 1967, the Rooks signed with the Jo-Way Recording Company and cut two new originals by Engel and Szmagalski (credited as John Brian). This resulted in a second 45, “Turquoise” b/w “Ice and Fire,” with a more psychedelic sound—odd changes, dissonant acid-rock guitars, and folky harmonies, not unlike what their British heroes the Who and the Move were exploring. Two versions of the single exist, one with gold hub labels and the other with blue, but Young isn’t sure if they contain the same recordings—both are hard to find, and neither sold well.
The Rooks would release only one more single, 1969’s so-rare-it’s-almost-a-rumor “Hoping to Be Gone Soon” b/w “Free Sunday Paper.” (Like their Mercury 45, it appears to exist only as DJ copies.) Both songs are by Engel and Szmagalski, and the latter is a catchy blues rambler with creamy wah-wah guitar a la the Nazz or the SRC. Oddly, the single appeared on Twinight, which was almost exclusively a soul label, releasing the likes of Syl Johnson and Renaldo Domino. “I finally found a copy of the Twinight 45, which took me more than 15 years of searching,” Young says. “For me, that was kind of the last piece of the puzzle.”
The Numero Group included “Free Sunday Paper” (and both sides of the Jo-Way single) on the 2020 digital compilation Teen Expo: The Quill Label, though the Rooks weren’t on Quill.
By the time that single came out, though, the Rooks were coming apart. Charles was frustrated with their new manager, believing him to be doing little but lining his own pockets. He and Haack left the group, replaced by Russ Neiman (drums) and Willie Forst (bass), both of whom had been in the House of Blue Light with Szmagalski. “Neither the Jo-Way or Twinight single made much of an impression and the band appears to have called it quits by 1970,” Young wrote.
The aftermath of the Rooks is even hazier, but Young did his research. “According to Charles, after he left the Rooks, he quickly joined the Troys, which eventually became Pendragon, both Chicago-area groups,” he says. “Charles also said Michael Been was a member of both groups (pre-Aorta, Lovecraft, the Call, et cetera). Both groups released a single on Tower in 1968 or ’69.”
That might not have been the end of the line either, but not even Young is sure. “A friend of the band contacted me a year or so ago and said that he remembers when the Rooks broke up that Jeff Pranno and a few of the members started a new band called the Phantoms,” he says. “I was never able to confirm that.”
Around a decade back, Pranno and Billy Haack were playing around Illinois in an Allman Brothers cover outfit called Third Rail Blues Band, but Haack passed away last year.
The Rooks’ thin catalog has remained vital through the decades. Cultishly adored Bay Area “budget rock” maniacs the Mummies covered “A Girl Like You” on their Shitsville EP in 1990, introducing it to a new generation of garage-rock fiends. I first heard the Rooks original on the tenth CD in the famous Pebbles compilation series, released in 1996. “Free Sunday Paper” and both songs from the Jo-Way single appear on the 1997 CD compilation The Quill Records Story, which focuses on Chicago bands (though many, the Rooks included, were never on the Quill label). And a year after the Sundazed reissue in 2006, garage-revival band the Midways covered “A Girl Like You” on their album Manners, Manners.
I’d love to see a vinyl Rooks anthology that compiles all their singles and demos, so here’s hoping the surviving members get behind that idea. And fingers crossed I keep finding ways to write about more Chicagoland garage bands!
The radio version of the Secret History of Chicago Music airs on Outside the Loop on WGN Radio 720 AM, Saturdays at 5 AM with host Mike Stephen. Past shows are archived here.
