Genya Ravan Talks with Garagerocktopia (Part 1)

Words like “trailblazer” get thrown around a lot when talking about rock and roll. And, truth be told, with so many styles, subgenres and directions, a good command of exponents is kind of handy of just how many people qualify to be a trailblazer. Few of those pioneers, though, have done more than Genya Ravan – and done it facing so many challenges along the way. And this week, we were fortunate enough to have her talk with us here at Garagerocktopia.

 

Artists like Pat Benatar, Chrissy Hynde, and the Runaways (and especially Joan Jett as a solo artist) – all clearly show the influence of Genya Ravan, who was out there making rock and roll when potty training was still a new concept to all these artists. It’s tough to imagine Suzi Quatro, or Patti Smith, and today’s crop of women rockers – from the Bangles to the Gore Gore Girls, without Goldie and the Gingerbreads being there first.

Yes, they eventually would have carved out their place in the music biz. But, the amount of incoming they took was probably a lot less thanks to Ravan, whom, thank you very much, took a whole lot of it starting in the early ‘60s.

And granted, Ravan was not the first female rock and roller. Blues and jazz women  women like Billie Holliday and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and early country and rock and roll artists like Wanda Jackson and Bonnie Guitar had already laid some of the groundwork. But this was the very first full-on rock and roll band formed, fronted and played by women, and not everyone was completely on-board for it.

“I’ve always had to fight for everything I got,” Ravan recalled, “I had to tread on roads that women had not yet to tread.”

Ravan talked with Garagerocktopia on phone from her home in New York, recalling some of the challenges she has faced from being the leader of the first all-women rock and roll band, about being one of the very first women to produce, the early days of punk – a genre that she helped bring along -- and why, years and years on, people are still listening both to her music and her life story, without a doubt both one of rock’s most effectual and inspirational.

Like with so many other artists that we’ve featured on this blog, you can’t take a five-decade-long story (not to mention a life story before that) and package it perfectly in a blogpost. A better place to get the whole story would be Ravan’s autobiography, “The Lollipop Lounge.” But we can whet your appetite a bit, and Ravan was kind enough to recount some of the challenges – and triumphs – of being a “rock and roll chick.”

A quick thumbnail of Ravan’s life: She was born Genyusha Zelkovicz in Poland in 1940, in the midst of that closest thing to Hell on Earth called Nazi occupation. She lost two brothers in the Holocaust (or Shoah, as Jews call it).  Needless to say, the family had to be tough to handle the loss of family, the war, and its aftermath.

While it would be patently offensive to refer to anything about this time in her life as a silver lining, that resilience she and her family had to possess to merely survive no doubt helped Zelkoviczwith later challenges.

They emigrated to the United States in 1947. As an immigrant family, there were still challenges. There were language barriers, cultural differences to navigate and, being the child of immigrants from Eastern Europe, Zelkovicz immediately stood out as different.

Growing up, Ravan didn’t particularly entertain any notions of being a rock star. Then, at a party one night, at the behest of a friend, Zelkovicz sang for everyone at the party – and set the course for the rest of her life. Before that point, she had not really aspired to be a rock and roll singer. But the experience set her on the path that would immediately change her life -- and that change in her life would allow others to change their lives as well.

Zelkovicz went to on to briefly become a member of the band the Escorts, then later made history in 1962 by forming Goldie and the Gingerbreads, who would soon become the first all-female rock and roll band signed to a major label. In some ways, it is still her most successful venture, at least financially.

“I made more money with Goldie and the Gingerbreads than with any other group, I was with” Ravan admits. “We got paid more because we were chicks. We were the band that got hired for the rich people’s parties. We got rumored and rumored to the point that Ahmet Ertugan (the chairman of Atlantic Records) had to come check us out.”

Just before the British Invasion, some of what would soon become the rock audience had either gravitated towards folk music, while others adopted R&B. Goldie and the Gingerbreads were firmly in the latter camp. Some were expecting nicey-nicey-girlie when the band took the stage, then were amazed to find the women had the pipes to back up the music.

Goldie and the Gingerbreads

The band’s occasionally gritty sound also helped them to get the attention of similar-minded artists from Britain, including one Michael Jeffery, at the time the manager of the Animals. He helped the band set up shop in the UK, where their fans began to include the royalty of British rock at that time – particularly the Rolling Stones.

“We shocked everybody,” Ravan recalls. “They saw four chicks come out on stage and you could see the smirks, until we started to play, then their mouths would drop.” 

From there, Goldie and the Gingerbreads commanded the deference of the boy’s club that rock and roll then was. Well, OK, not exactly.

Though Goldie and the Gingerbreads were well-received by both audiences and industry folk alike, they were, after all, women elbowing their way into a man’s, man’s man’s world. And it wasn’t easy. There was an awful lot of epic nonsense was thrown their direction.

“We were the queens of nonsense,” said Ravan. “(The early ‘60s) were a really chauvinistic era. In some ways, it was good but we had to fight just to get paid. We didn’t have roadies – in fact, that didn’t even exist at the time – so we had to handle all of our equipment.”

 

Still, Goldie and the Gingerbreads would tour with some of the greatest bands of the era, including the Stones, the Kinks and the Yardbirds, and became one of many things that made early and mid-‘60s London swing. That time is chronicled wonderfully in Ravan’s song from 2013, “Cobblestones Rolling Stones.”

There were also a lot of all-girl bands, such as the Debutantes, that sprang up throughout the ‘60s, most of whom didn’t make much of an dent on the charts or get much airplay. Still, they were visible, some played terrific music and it’s far-fetched to think that the presence of Goldie and the Gingerbreads didn’t at least partly help make all of that likely.

But while Goldie and the Gingerbreads easily commanded the respect of other rock and rollers, that esteem didn’t quite translate that into hit singles, especially in the U.S. Of course, we here at Garagerocktopia couldn’t give a tinker’s you-know-what about pop charts and units moved, but to make it in the ‘60s you had to have a ready steady supply of hits, which Goldie and company didn’t have. After some changes, both with labels and personnel, the band was kaputsky by 1968.

But the breakup of Goldie and the Gingerbreads presented new opportunities for Zelkovicz. Genyusha now went by the shortened version of her given name, Genya, and she took the last name Ravan. She would also adopt a new, musically meatier sound, and blaze another trail. This time, she founded and fronted a new group, Ten Wheel Drive.

Formed by Ravan in 1969, Ten Wheel Drive’s expansive arrangements gave Ravan’s voice a lot more territory to thrive. It was also one of a group of bands who, like Blood, Sweat and Tears and, (in its more interesting days), Chicago, that created heady gumbo of jazz, soul, blues and rock. Among the ensemble’s most notable songs was its version of “Stay With Me.” Ravan’s persona would clearly be channeled by Bette Midler performing that same song in her breakthrough movie, “The Rose.”

But so many years after her first foray into the world of rock, Ravan found out that despite now being a veteran rock and roller, despite being the one that founded the band in the first place, and regardless that she pointed out so much of the musical direction the band would take, to some guys rock and roll was still the Boys Town.

“I don’t know why, but sometimes jazz players were the most chauvinistic of all,” said Ravan. “They resented that I shut them up when it was my turn to sing – they just wanted to play on and on.”

During Ravan’s time with the band, Ten Wheel Drive would release three albums that were considered high quality and even influential, but just didn’t light up the Billboard charts quite enough. By 1971, Ravan left the band.

 

While Genya Ravan had already broken more ground and accomplishments than most artists could conceive of, more was to come. More firsts and more great music lie in the decade to come. And next week, we’ll talk about some of that music.

Lots more about Genya Ravan here.