Mick Orton
Recently, it has confused some people that The Silvers and Silver Laughter are showing up in the same place. So I will endeavor to explain the thought process as we move forward with changes to the site.
The IRRMA Hall of Fame Induction of Silver Laughter in 2014 was a big deal for me. After spending all that time (and money) getting the voice and bass licks back into shape, the travel and the hotel rooms, I thought it was a waste to end our music career with that concert. However, the rest of the band did not seem to feel that way. When I proposed recording new music digitally across the long distances that separated us, nobody in Silver Laughter seemed interested. It is a big time commitment.
Tom Kelley
However, I did not let that dampen my enthusiasm for recording again. Old pal from the TODD Beat Group days, Tom Kelley, was at the IRRMA event and was eager to join in the endeavor. It turned out that Silver Laughter member, Ken Wiles, and I had written a few nifty tunes after leaving the group that deserved to be recorded. I had also composed a few on my own that fit the genre of the direction Silver Laughter had been going with “Sailing On Fantasies”. And, as you will hear on the new album, Tom and I had collaborated on a couple of TODD tunes back in 1968!
Ricky Zero
Coincidentally, not long after arriving home from the celebration, I was contacted by e-mail from a guy in Atlanta. That fellow turned out to be bassist/guitarist Ricky Zero. As it happened, he found our site while looking for a calendar and ran across one of my postings about the booking calendar from 1978! And he had also participated in long distance recording so he could guide the rest of us through some of the hazards that lay ahead. Also being a big Beatles fan helped a lot; we just clicked. When it came time to choose a name that fit the music, like the Silver Beatles who dropped one word to become The Beatles, we chose to drop Laughter and became The Silvers!
Glenn Stone
Not long after recording our first single, “Running Away/Nothing Really Matters”, I found out Silver Laughter’s old sound and light man, Glenn Stone, was a drummer. So it was a natural fit to draft him!
That’s the connection. I recorded on the two albums that Silver Laughter did, Ken Wiles was on both albums as well and helped write a lot of the songs for The Silvers, and Glenn (AKA the Punk!) was sound and light man for the band! And so we continue on the path that Silver Laughter started on back in 1976!
We will continue to post any and all history of Silver Laughter as we move forward with new information about The Silvers, and we hope you will continue to enjoy the site.
Categories: Current News, Hall of Fame, The Silvers
Reblogged this on The Silvers and commented:
I found this post and decided to bring it back to the top! My hope is the late comers to this site will get some perspective about how The Silvers was founded.