Mark Lindsay
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- This page is on the American musician. For the English footballer see Mark Lindsay (footballer).
Mark Lindsay is an American musician, best known as the singer for the group Paul Revere and the Raiders.
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[edit] Early career
Mark Lindsay was born on March 9, 1942, in Idaho. He was the middle of eighteen children. He first began to perform at the age of fifteen with local bands, playing local venues. He was tapped to sing in a band called Freddy Chapman and the Idaho Playboys after he won a local talent contest. After Chapman left the area to work at another radio station, Lindsay saw the other band members and a new member, Paul Revere Dick, playing at a local I.O.O.F. Hall. He got the current band to allow him to sing a few songs with them. The next day he was working at his regular job, at a bakery, when Paul Revere came in. Paul Revere owned his own hamburger restaurant and bought supplies from the bakery where Mark Lindsay worked. It was this chance meeting that began their professional relationship.
[edit] The Downbeats
Mark became lead singer, and saxophone player in a band with Revere and several others. He suggested that they call themselves "The Downbeats" after a magazine with the same title. They made some demo tapes in 1960 in Boise, Idaho, and signed with a record company called Gardena Records. After changing personnel a couple more times, the band recorded the song, "Louie, Louie", about the same time that a rival Northwestern Band, The Kingsmen, recorded the song.
[edit] Paul Revere & the Raiders
The Kingsmen version was the one that charted nationally, but Mark and his fellow bandmates were gaining attention, also. Around this time they decided to use Paul Revere's name as a gimmick and bill themselves as Paul Revere and the Raiders, and they began to dress in Revolutionary War style outfits. Mark Lindsay carried the theme a bit farther by growing his hair out and pulling it back into a ponytail, which has become his own signature look.
Mark and the group caught the attention of Dick Clark, who was creating an afternoon show for the teen market. Clark hired the group to perform on the show, which was called Where the Action Is. As regulars on the show, the group soon found great success, and Mark Lindsay's lanky stature and good looks, as well as his excellent singing voice, quickly gained him immense popularity, and he became one of the premier American teen idols of the 1960s.
Mark soon started working not only as the singer of the group, but also as a composer and producer for the group. As the Raiders were the first rock group signed by Columbia Records, they were produced by Terry Melcher, the son of actress and singer Doris Day. Lindsay and Melcher became friends, sharing a home for a while, which would later become infamous as site of the horrific murder of actress Sharon Tate committed by members of Charles Manson's "family."
[edit] Television
By 1968 Mark had totally taken over the writing and producing tasks for the group. Paul Revere and the Raiders has always seemed to have a revolving cast of band members, and until later, only Revere and Mark Lindsay were the two who had remained in the group since its inception. By 1968 Where the Action Is, had passed into television history. Dick Clark came up with another show, Happening 68 which was to be hosted by Paul Revere and Mark Lindsay, and feature the group. The group itself was featured dominantly in this show, whereas in Where the Action is, the entire group was part of an ensemble of other musical performers. Happening '68 premiered in January of 1968. The show was so popular that they also hosted a daily version over the summer of 1968, called It's Happening. Happening '68 survived into 1969, at which point the name of the show became just the word "Happening." It was canceled in October of 1969.
By this time, like many other groups, Mark Lindsay and his bandmates were trying to maintain their success, but also moving in other directions. Mark began to record solo records, as well as produce records for his fellow bandmate, Freddy Weller, who would go on to have his own solo success in the country music field.
Mark Lindsay had some success with such songs as "Arizona" and "Silverbird", in the early seventies. Ironically, he recorded "Indian Reservation," a song written by John Loudermilk years earlier, to be a solo recording, but the decision was made to release the song under the name of Paul Revere and the Raiders, and it went on to be the only number one song in the group's history. By the mid-seventies the group no longer sold records as they once had, and lost their Columbia contract. Mark Lindsay officially left the group in 1975 when he and Paul Revere apparently had different visions for the group and their own individual pursuits. He did make a few more appearances in 1976 for some bicentennial performances.
[edit] After the Raiders
Mark has stayed in the music and entertainment business in different ways, serving as head of A&R for United Artists Records. He contributed to such recordings as Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street," and several Kenny Rogers recordings, as well as other artists. He also added composing jingles for commercials and score for motion pictures to his accomplishments, contributing both his voice and musical compositions to ad for companies such as Yamaha, which used the music from "Silverbird," as the background for one of their ads. He also composed music for the movies For Pete's Sake, and The Love Machine, sung by Barbara Streisand and Dionne Warwick, respectively, and for a 1982 documentary, The Killing of America, as well as a song for the movie Savage Streets. In 1980 he dubbed a voice for an American version of a Japanese movie, Shogun Assassin.
Mark made some appearances in 1985 in conjunction with the centennial of the Statue of Liberty, and at that point he began to tour on his own again. In the early nineties he met the group, The Chesterfield Kings in Rochester, NY, on one of his tours. That meeting resulted later in a collaboration between he and the Chesterfield Kings, as Mark performed on their recording of "Where Do We Go From Here?" He also appeared in a cameo in their film, Where Are the Chesterfield Kings.
Mark has released some of his own work himself-Video Dreams is one title. In 2003 he had announced he would retire from touring, but he later reconsidered. He currently does some touring, but as of January 7, 2006, he was heard on a webcast every Saturday night on the website of KISN radio from 7 p.m. to 12 a.m. PST, titled "Mark After Dark." On November 11, 2006 "Mark After Dark" switched to FM webcast K-Hits 106-7 Saturday nights 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. PST. On March 10, 2007 the program "Mark After Dark" changed its name to "Mark Lindsay's Rock & Roll Cafe" to reflect the forthcoming restaurant and name, debuting in Portland, Oregon in May 2007 where the show will originate from.
Mark is married to the former Debbie Brandt. They married on January 29, 1989 in McCall, Idaho.
[edit] External links
Mark Lindsay was born in Eugene, Or. not Idaho. Source is Portland Tribune article. http://www.portlandtribune.com/features/story.php?story_id=117416882904275300
