Black Diamond: Excerpts
Excerpt from Chapter One, "No Rest for the Wicked":
"Whatever happened to Chelsea and Lips?"

Although Peter, in many interviews, tried to convey the group as breaking up soon after the low sales of the CHELSEA album; with himself playing the hermit for the next couple of years before meeting Gene and Paul; the band would continue for some time to come. Chelsea began rehearsing material for a followup album for Decca while continuing to play almost exclusively in the New York City area. However, with the failure of the album the band members began to bicker over what direction their music needed to go in for them to become more successful. Two members wanted to play folk rock like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, two other members wanted to tear up the town with hard-driving rock 'n roll, with the other member stradling the fench between the two divisions.

"The first album didn't do very well." Stan remembered. "It was kind of a folk/acid band, that type of thing. So it was up to us to come up with a new concept. What eventually happened was that, in the course of writing with the 'electric' Pete and Mike (that was Peter Criss and Mike Benvenga), there was also the 'acoustic' Peter and Mike and I wrote with them also. But what happened with Chelsea is that, we're performing half the night -- very loud, street and psycedelic music -- and then we would go into kind of a folky set. Not cohesive at all."

Still the band struggled on until one night when the group would magically transform into an "electric" and hard rock band once and for all, as Stan recalled. "Mike Brand (the 'acoustic' Mike) was habitually late for gigs. Benvenga, Criss and myself were sitting in the Yellow Front Saloon and were supposed to go on. We blew off the first set. The crowd was getting bigger and wilder. So I just said, 'Well, why don't we just go up and play.' We all kinda look at each other and said, 'Well what do we do.' The first thing out of our mouths is, 'Well, let's play "Blue Suede Shoes."' From that point on, the reaction was unbelievable. The crowd was screaming.

"By the time Peter Shepley and Mike Brand made it to the club, they didn't believe it was happening. So they never even got up on the stage. They sat and watch a bit and then got in their car and left.

"There was a month were . . .well, you know how these_things go in a band . . .'I own this' and 'This is my amplifier.' Blah, blah, blah. But that was pretty much the_end of Chelsea._ And Chelsea became Lips -- at least the electric half. The 'acoustic' Pete and the 'acoustic' Mike never did make anymore music after that. They moved out_into the country -- the Hackentown area, which is seventy miles west of Manhattan -- and I'm not really sure what happened to those two."

The threesome would continue as Lips for the remainder of the year, playing gigs far and wide: from a ski-resort in the Catskills, to the infamous Hotel Diplomat in New York. The band were even able to snag a series of gigs at the St. James Infirmary. Lips also went the rounds of the record companies in hopes of lining up another album after Decca dropped Chelsea from their label. In Spring 1971, Lips had arranged through Lydia's cousin to record three tracks at RCA, but were not satisfied with the sound quality of the material and ultimately found no use for the material_in any capacity.

Moving forward, Lips was able to convince Kama Sutra Records to at least give them some time in the studios for demos, and the band went to Bell Sound Studios in September and October 1971 to work on several songs they had written. Included in the group of songs were several written by Stan Penridge that would later turn up on Peter's solo album in 1978, including "Don't You Let Me Down," "I'm Gonna Love You," "Hooked On Rock & Roll" and "That's The Kinda Sugar Papa Likes." After listening to the results, Kama Sutra quietly passed on the trio. But not before trying to influence the head of Buddah Records, one of the companies under Kama Sutra, to take a look at the band. It was to be an ironic meeting in retrospect years later.

"One of the people we went to see was Neil Bogart." Peter told Rick Mattingly in 1980. "Neil is president of Casablanca Records now, but then he was president of Buddah Records. So Mike and Stan took acoustic guitars and I took a conga and we walked right into his office and started auditioning. He threw us out.

"A couple of years ago, I was having dinner with him one night and I said, 'Really think back. Do you remember a crazy group that you once had to throw out of your office?' And he said, 'You're kidding!' And I said, 'Not only was I the drummer, but one of the songs we sang was "Beth." Today you've got a gold album hanging on your wall for a song you once threw out of your office.' He couldn't believe it. It was really funny." Reflecting in 1994 on this story, Stan pointed out that he had been with Peter at the time of this conversation with Bogart. Stan remembered Bogart's response being simply a shrugging of his shoulders, giving his reason for throwing the band out as, "It was not the music, it was the timing."

Michael Benvenga by this time was ready to leave the group as well. After being in the band for close to four years and seeing the hopes of success slowly slip away, Benvenga decided that the rock and roll lifestyle was not for him. Also of concern to Benvenga was his decision to get married. The "fly by the seat of your pants" world of music that lead to not knowing if one was even going to get paid for the gig, much less even having a gig to play, was no future to a man wanting to settle down and have a family. At that point, he decided to quit and began working as a bank teller. A few years later Michael Benvenga would pass away due to pneumatic menegitis. Peter had always promised Benvenga that, if Peter ever did a solo album, Michael would play on it. When the time came for such an album in 1978, Benvenga was already gone. Peter dedicated the album to him as a tribute to a musician who he truly enjoyed playing with.

Even with Lips no longer functioning, Peter and Stan decided to continue as a duet in order to bring money in. It was a depressing downward spiral for Peter in four short years -- starting in a band with five members and a record deal, to doing acoustic sets as a duet lacking so much in enthusiasm that the two never even bothered to give themselves a name to go by when playing gigs. Feeling that he had waited too long for the success that he felt he had worked hard for, Peter decided at the beginning of 1972 to try and jump-start his career in his own way. And he had a couple of ideas in mind.