One Hit No More, No. 10: The Chantays Shoot the "Pipeline" (to Nowhere)

These were men either in, or just after, high school. #OldeTyme

I flirted with the idea of combining The Surfaris and The Chantays into one post, but opted against because dropping them into a bucket called “surf rock” felt like short-changing both bands. As it turns out, though, neither band did much beyond putting out two famous hits, both in the same year, and in a musical movement that everyone agrees got crushed under the British Invasion, and that few seemed to miss when it left. To contextualize that argument, I lifted this from the LA Times’ obituary from founding Chantay, Brian Carman:

“On his debut album in 1967, Jimi Hendrix promised his listeners that ‘you'll never hear surf music again.’”

Surf came and went, mostly within 1963, and Hendrix still felt like he had to crap on it four years later…

The Surfaris had “Wipe Out” (a brief history of the band and the song) and The Chantays had “Pipeline.” The differences don’t quite end there, but they don’t go much further either. Both bands formed in high school (The Chantays were a bit older, collectively), and wrapped up as going, creative concerns shortly after. Both came from southern California, both looked up to and borrowed from the same bands/artists – e.g., The Ventures, Dick Dale, and The Rhythm Rangers, whose line-up included Carman’s older brother, Steve (just for the record, the Orange County Register’s obit on Carman calls them The Rhythm Rockers). Carman and his friends formed The Chantays for the oldest reason people go into entertainment. As Bob Spickard, the other half of the band’s brain said, “Hey, these guys were making money and getting all the girls, so maybe we ought to think about that.”

As for their big hit, “Pipeline” started as a completely different concept. The song was ultimately inspired by surfing movie clippings of Hawaii's "Banzai Pipeline” in a Bruce Brown(?) “surf movie”, but it took a winding road to get there. As related between those two obituaries (the best, maybe the only easy sources on The Chantays), the song started as “44 Magnum,” but they changed it to “Liberty’s Whip” after watching Lee Marvin’s character in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. They recorded the song in the back of a record store named Wenzel’s Music Town, in Downey, California. (Could be the stealth vehicle that allowed Morton Downey Jr. to claim authorship of both “Pipeline” and “Wipe Out”? Dunno, but the origin stories for both songs neither mention nor need him.)

Carman (guitar) is the only currently deceased band member. The rest, Spickard (guitar), Bob Welch (drums; also, seen in this ambush interview), Warren Waters (bass; also the guy who came up with “Pipeline” for the title), and Rob Marshall (piano), are still kicking, but all of them appear to have settled into day jobs instead of continuing in the music industry. In their hey-day, though, they hit big enough to put out two full albums, both in 1963: Pipeline and Two Sides of The Chantays. And, until I see it credibly disputed, they were the one and only rock band to ever play The Lawrence Welk Show. That’s a raucous stage show for ’63. And, as everyone notes, Welk sent the boys a cheese log every Christmas for a couple years.

You can’t hear the song so well in that recording, but I rank “Pipeline” above “Wipe Out” in terms of both style and subtlety. It possesses a musical quality that sounds like “being in the zone” inside a perfect pipeline. To do what no one asked for and pit the two bands against the other, The Chantays boast a more mature, and generally less hokey sound – I credit the piano/electric organ personally (see “Greenz”) – across its two albums, their vocals were less stiff (see their cover of Buddy Holly’s “Maybe Baby”), and they managed a little more musical variety. The LA Times obit flags a couple songs as other minor hits for them – e.g., “Killer Dana,” “Bailout at Frog Rock” and, another, “South Swell,” which I still haven’t heard – while the band’s Wikipedia page names two songs I picked as highlights from Pipeline, “Blunderbuss” and “El Conquistador.”

I don’t want to push the “variety” line too hard. If surf rock has a weakness, it’s constantly feeling like you’ve already heard each song before as you make your way through an album. Still, it’s great for what it is (and I think they make great filler tracks on a playlist), and The Chantays worked their vein in music history pretty damn well.