Black Diamond: Excerpts
Excerpt from Chapter One, "No Rest for the Wicked":
"Wicked Lester"

The band began working together on material and decided to name themselves Wicked Lester, a name they adopted supposedly from the wicker furniture store that was below the loft that they practiced in. With the initial interest some of the labels had in Rainbow, Wicked Lester was able to swing a one-record deal with Epic Records in 1971. The band members were positive that their success and fame was at hand as they went into Electric Lady Studios in early 1971 with producer Ron Johnsen. With the freedom of making their own music in the studios, Gene and Paul expected to finally see their version of the music shine through. Unfortunately, the excitement and curiosity of finally being in the studio professionally lead the band to act like kids in a candy store.

"There's some pretty funny stuff on that record." Paul reminisced to Ken Sharp in GOLDMINE (Vol. 16, No. 13, Issue 259, page 12). "Whatever was hip at the moment we put on. If a record was out with wah-wah pedal on it, we put a wah-wah pedal on ours. If somebody in the band had a slide guitar, we'd say, 'Hey, let's put a slide guitar on.' There would be a horn part and a flute part...it's real funny."

Included on the album were two songs from Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil ("Sweet Ophelia" and "Too Many Mondays"), along with a cover of a track previously done by the Hollies, "We Wanna Shout It Out Loud." The other seven tracks completed for the album were either written by Gene, Stanley or both together. Many of the songs, due to the mixture of instruments and the pop flavor of many of the tracks, are very upbeat and somewhat confused. Paul, again with Ken Sharp, elaborated on how production was done on the album with his song "Molly" (sometimes listed in fan-circles as "Going 'Round The Bend"): "I wanted to try one of those cutesy McCartney songs where he's playing on the guitar, and I played banjo on it [Ron Leejack disputed this claim in a questionnaire intereview in the fanzine KISS RENEGADES, (#11) stating that he had played banjo and rhythm guitar on this track alone], but the rest of the band wound up adding horns to it. The strange thing about Wicked Lester was that no matter how a song started out, it turned into something totally different.

"It's not that I'm embarrassed by it. You let something pass for long enough and time goes by and you can kinda chuckle at it. It think it's kinda funny to hear an_18-year old kid trying to sound like Tom Jones."

The album was completed and sent to Epic Records who rejected the finished product at the beginning of 1972. In fact, it was not the first time that Epic, or rather, Columbia, was unsure about the band. As Ron Leejack told KISS RENEGADES (#11, page 28), "Columbia wanted to hear the group play live before signing them up. Ron Johnsen and the group were all upset about this because they thought they were losing their recording deal. The day came and I arranged it so my guitar amp was right next to where the A & R man was going to sit. I was going to sit while I played because I play better sitting and I knew I had to pull this off. The band started playing and jumping around, and I am sitting there playing, and my solo came up. Well I just over-played and extended my solo and blew the A & R man away. When it was over he came up to me and said that the band does not have to worry, we have the recording deal . . . . So we went on recording."

Epic did not like the results of the album, however they were still interested in the band and suggested that they take another crack at it within the year. Confused by why Epic did not like the finished product, Gene and Paul got hold of a vinyl version of the album and went to see what the public's reaction to the disc would be.

In a interview with a reporter several years later, Paul told for the first time how the public unveiling of the album went. "The first time we were on radio, Gene and I had gone to a small station on the Jersey shore with the Wicked Lester demo. We were on the show and played this record that skipped a lot. The needle skipped completely across the record! The disc jockey started taking calls to 'talk to this new band' and of course, no one called. During the commercial break, we called all our friends and asked them to phone in. One girl who called was asked by the dj why she wanted to talk to this band. She said, 'Because they called me up and asked me to call them.'"

It was a humiliating experience to the duo who had worked hard on the album and really wanted it to succeed.