Garagerocktopia and Count Five

“Psychotic Reaction” is one of the biggest game-changers in rock history. It’s anguished, almost angry tone and to-the-point lyrics were a strong counterpoint to the carefree harmonies of bands like the Beatles and the Hollies. That tone would make the path to punk rock 10 years later just that much better lit. At the time, lead singer Kenn Ellner had little idea that he and his band, the Count Five, were changing the course of Rock and Roll.

“We were high school kids who were having fun playing the music,” recalled Ellner, talking by telephone to Garagerocktopia from outside the United States. “We had a sense we could play and we had fun with it, but even after we had hits, we had no idea what we were doing would become so iconic.”

As oddball as the song seemed at the time, “Psychotic Reaction” was quite well received. It peaked at number five on the Billboard singles chart. At the time, rock bands later described as “garage rock” were regularly putting songs on the top 10 charts.

While many of those songs continue, 50 years later, to be enjoyed by legions of fans, few match “Psychotic Reaction” for long-term impact on the later emergence of succeeding waves of garage rock, power pop, punk and metal.

A few years later, like so many of its peers, the Count Five would disappear, except for an occasional spin on oldies or college radio. Self-described freaks, misfits and weirdos would not only continue to listen, but form their own bands – and whole genres like Psychobilly -- with an obvious debt to the Count Five.

Almost 30 years after the fact, was Ellner finally made to realize exactly how vital the song was. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame selected the song as one of the most 500 influential songs in Rock History. All of this keeps the Count Five in demand, and these days they still perform occasional gigs.

“Sometime in the mid 90’s – ‘93, ’94 or so – I got a call from a friend who told me the ‘Psychotic Reaction’ was named one of the most 500 influential songs in rock history, said Ellner. “I saw the exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and they said the song was a genre shift, especially on commercial radio, and it’s also seen as ushering in garage rock and psychedelia. For us, though, we were just making music.”

The Count Five formed in 1964 in San Jose, California by John Michalski and Roy Chaney. Later, Ellner, along with John Byrne and Butch Atkinson came aboard, most of the members still students at Pioneer High School.

Like endless minions of American teenagers in 1964, the British Invasion captured the imaginations of Ellner and company, and for a short time they named themselves the vaguely English sounding Squires. Soon, the band changed into the Count Five. Playing on the “count” theme, the band frequently performed with Dracula-styled capes.

But where so many other bands wanted to sound like the Beatles, the Count Five looked to some of the grittier and lesser known bands of the day, and were influenced by some of their more obscure cuts, helping the band carve out a very different sound than many of their contemporaries.

“We were just one part of a lot of ‘60s sounds,” said Ellner. “We didn’t sound like the Byrds – we had more of a Yardbirds sound. We mixed originals with current hits. What we also did was to buy a lot of imports from lesser known bands like the Pretty Things and the Mojo Men, bands that not too many people heard of.”

“Psychotic Reaction” was the band’s only real hit, but far from their only good song. “Revelations in Slow Motion” is our favorite Count Five tune here at Garagerocktopia, and several other songs, including “Declaration of Independence” and “Contrast” rock like crazy. In fact, if you’re really interested in what Count Five was capable of, do check out their album Rarities – The Double Shot Years.

Sadly, though “Psychotic Reaction” had hit song written all over it, the band’s other songs were given the short shrift.

“’Psychotic Reaction’ was produced really well, but the rest of the album was not,” Ellner lamented. “We were really shocked when we heard the rest of the album. I think our other songs could have led to much better results had the production been better.”

The Count Five weren’t the only happening rock band in San Jose. While San Francisco got – and still gets – much of the attention, some of garage rock’s most important bands were coming out of San Jose, including the Syndicate of Sound and the Chocolate Watchband.

There have been a few big rivalries in garage rock – the Watchband and Los Angeles-based band the Seeds had a dandy, sometimes mean-spirited one – but Ellner said San Jose was plenty big enough for all the bands.

“The Syndicate of Sound, when we were in high school, were the band in San Jose,” explained Ellner. “They were the ones that, if they were playing, you had to go see them. After being on the road with them, we got to be good friends with them, and they’re still friends of ours today.”

“We didn’t have a rivalry at all with the Chocolate Watchband. David Aguilar had his own thing going. They had their own niche, and their guitar player, Ned Torney was a good friend of mine. We felt a push from each of these groups to be that much better at what we did. It was a good time to be in San Jose.”

The only San Jose band with whom the Count Five had anything remotely resembling rivalry with was People!, made up of guys from Pioneer High School’s arch-rival, Willow Glen.

People! had a  top-15 hit with their cover of the Zombies’ “I Love You” in 1968. But the rivalry wasn’t based on hit-making or guitar licks. It was mostly a proxy war between two San Jose DJs.

Helping some of the San Jose bands break out was radio station KLIV. We’re talking mid-‘60s, way before the internet, way before YouTube or MTV, back when radio – and AM radio at that – held the fate of many a band. By playing the Count Five, People!,  and all the other great San Jose bands, KLIV had a coolness about it that wouldn’t be matched until a few years later with the advent of FM radio.

KLIV had two big dogs in particular – Mike Hunter, a true San Jose legend, and Brian Lord, a legend in his own right albeit in different markets. San Jose was plenty big enough for all of its bands. Apparently, KLIV wasn’t big enough for Hunter and Lord.

“There was some rivalry maybe with People!” recalled Ellner. “We went to rival high schools, but it was really more of a rivalry between the DJs at KLIV. Brian Lord liked us; his boss was Captain Mikey. They didn’t like each other, but there was nothing blatant with us.”

Another rivalry that some may think existed but in reality did not was with a band from about 700 miles to the south, the Standells out of Los Angeles. The bands did play a show together in now-infamous San Bernardino, California. While there was exactly zero bad blood between the two groups, it did irk Count Five that so many writers compared them, curious considering that the bands – at least to our ears – sound nothing alike. To this day, the Count Five’s official bio contains the sentence “The Standells were not an influence.”

“Some articles compared us to the Standells,” commented Ellner. “We got compared because there was maybe a similar attitude in their songs and ours, but (other than a “Dirty Water” cover with Boston native Rocky Astrella on vocals years later) we didn’t do anything that had to do with the Standells.”

Like so many other bands of the era, the Count Five didn’t last very long. While hit records made by teenagers are a little more unusual these days, in the ‘60s a lot of the really cool music did come from kids still living at home. And as their lives changed for the band members, the Count Five would necessarily fade away.

“It was a tumultuous time,” said Ellner. “There was the Vietnam War going on, plus people in the band going off to college. We were just trying to stay in school, but gradually the band fell apart.”

As mentioned in other features here at Garagerocktopia, bands were very much at the mercy of record labels and radio. Getting on the poopy list of either one usually meant the end of your career. Some have said the decentralized environment of the internet – where artists frequently end-run labels and radio – would have made a huge difference. Ellner didn’t quite see it this way.

“It’s much harder to break an act today,” Ellner said. “Social media evens the playing field a little bit, but you still have to get past all the noise, so it’s not as easy as it may seem.”

By the late ‘60s, two developments completely altered rock and roll – the new popularity of the long-play album (aka the LP) and the advent of FM radio, one feeding the other in a cycle that would wipe away what the status quo of rock and roll had been up to that time.

The Rock and Roll song has sort of come full circle. Through the mid-‘60s, rock was all about the hit single, the quick family-friendly ditty broadcast over AM radio. Today, with the preeminence of downloading and streaming services, the age of the single has more or less resurfaced as people pick and choose the songs they like.

But in between, there were bands like the Beatles, who could pack an album with an amazing collection of songs album after album. Later, with bands from the Who to the Pretty Things to Pink Floyd and even the Sex Pistols, bands could either develop a plot based on songs, or at least weave a continuous musical thread through a whole LP. For decades, the LP was Rock’s coin of the realm.

 

Today, FM Rock radio, at least in the United States, has largely become a superficial, unimaginative money-grubbing unlistenable joke. But back in the day, free from the rigid formats dictated by corporate freight-payers, FM stretched format boundaries and along the way, allowed rock fans to hear the true artistry of so many artists.

 

Had the Count Five lasted a tad longer, they may well have also benefited from Rock’s new landscape and been a much longer-lasting force in rock.

“Later in the ‘60s, the idea of the LP and FM radio became so important,” Ellner observed. “You would hear a lot of acts, and you’d hear album cuts that gave you a better sense of who a band is. I think that was a good time and this would have changed much, and if we could have stuck it out a couple more years, it would have made a big difference for the band.”

One place where the Count Five did continue was in an essay by famed music writer Lester Bangs. Entitled  Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, which later became a book, Bangs gave wild praise to the Count Five and their subsequent masterpieces -- Carburetor Dung, Cartesian Jetstream, Ancient Lace and Wrought-Iron Railings, and Snowflakes Falling On the International Dateline.

Of course, many know that these four albums never existed except in this particular essay, and that these

titles are products of Bangs’ arse. What’s less known is that Bangs did it mostly because he was being a dick.

“People didn’t realize it was a spoof --  he was being humorous,” said Ellner. “He was heard to say he picked us because he hated ‘Psychotic Reaction.’ The whole episode created an urban legend, and it all worked. We’re still talking about his book today.”

Bangs had his laugh, but perhaps The Count Five has laughed a bit louder. The song lives on today, enjoyed not just by garage rock fans but by people who appreciate its importance. Punk/Psychobilly band the Cramps still cover the song (and play the heck out of it). Ellner continues to be proud of his part in creating the song.

“I think we’re all thankful for ‘Psychotic Reaction’” said Ellner. “From my perspective, it is the best thing we created. We never created anything quite as impactful after that, and as we know, the public told us so.”