Clockwork Orange – "Your Golden Touch" (1967)

I was a fool to cry so much

I was a victim of your golden touch

In the previous 2 or 3 lines, we met Bill Ashley, the drummer of Clockwork Orange, a band from Paducah, KY, that released a great psychedelic single titled “Your Golden Touch” in 1967.

Here’s part two of my interview with Bill Ashley.

*     *     *     *     *

2 or 3 lines:  The version of “Your Golden Touch” that I heard on Steven Lorber’s “Mystic Eyes” radio program in 1980 was produced by the Cajun recording artist Doug Kershaw and released on his Creole label.  But you had recorded a different version of the song before you hooked up with Kershaw.  Tell us about how the original version of “Your Golden Touch” came to be recorded.

Clockwork Orange

Bill Ashley:  When we decided to record “Your Golden Touch,” we went to a recording studio in Lone Oak, Kentucky – just outside Paducah – which mostly did recordings of school bands and orchestras.  The studio was operated by Tommy Morrison, and we contacted Tommy and set up a date to record “Your Golden Touch.”  As I recall, Tommy was initially not very interested in the project, but he was a competent engineer.  We recorded two songs that day on a four-track tape recorder – “Your Golden Touch” and an instrumental cover of “Ferry Cross the Mersey.”  

2 or 3 lines:  That’s an odd coincidence – “Ferry Cross the Mersey,” which was a hit in 1965 for Gerry and the Pacemakers, was one of the first songs my eighth-grade band learned to play.  Were you happy with how “Your Golden Touch” came out?  

Bill:  The initial recording of “Your Golden Touch” was excellent.  Tommy Morrison added some reverb and that was all it needed.  He thought the record was great, too, and suggested we take it to Nashville to try and get a major label to release it. 

2 or 3 lines:  Is that what you did?

Bill: Yes, Terry and I went to Nashville and played it for several labels, but we got rejected every time –  it wasn’t what anyone was looking for.  Nashville was really only interested in country music at the time.  But Doug Kershaw had been outside of the studio door at one of the places we went to, and he heard the recording and asked us to bring it to his studio. 

2 or 3 lines:  Which I assume you did.

Bill:  Yes.  We went to his studio and he listened to “Your Golden Touch” again, and said he wanted us to re-record the song in his studio and release the song on the Creole label.  

2 or 3 lines: Doug Kershaw was kind of a big deal.  He was the most successful Cajun musician ever, and had a top ten country hit with “Louisiana Man,” which has been covered by over 800 artists.  Were you a fan of Kershaw’s?

Bill: We didn't know who he was, but we were ecstatic that someone liked our “Your Golden Touch.” But just after we got that good news, things started to turn bad. 

2 or 3 lines:  What do you mean?  What happened?

Bill:  Steve Rudolph, our organist, got on his motorcycle to go to his girlfriend’s house to tell her about our record deal, and had a terrible crash.  He was in a coma for days, and was unable to make the recording session, which took place in Birmingham, Alabama. We had to re-record “Your Golden Touch” without Steve – we used a studio musician instead of him.

2 or 3 lines:  So you went from being excited about recording under the guidance of a major recording artists like Kershaw to being devastated by Steve’s injuries.  I assume his condition weighed on everyone’s mind at that recording session.

Bill:  The Birmingham session did not turn out as well as the original session we did in Lone Oak with Tommy Morrison – partly because Steve was not there, and partly because we had been performing live a lot and were exhausted.  But Kershaw released the record even though we were disappointed in it.  The original recording at Tommy Morrison’s studio really represented the true essence of the Clockwork Orange.

*     *     *     *     *

The Lone Oak version of “Your Golden Touch” was never released, and few people other than Bill and his bandmates have ever heard it – until today, that is.

Bill had a copy of the demo on a minidisc – remember those? – that he converted to a .wav file and e-mailed to me.

A minidisc held one-third
as much music as a CD

That recording has some sonic flaws.  It was made from an acetate recording that was made more than 50 years ago from the original master tape.  (Bill has been unable to locate the original tape.)

A couple of years ago, a London company bought the acetate copy from Bill (who made the minidisc copy before shipping it off to Merry Olde).  They told him they hoped to enhance the quality of the acetate copy and eventually release the recording, but Bill hasn’t heard anything definite from them as of yet.

I’m hoping that company is able to produce a recording of the Lone Oak version “Your Golden Touch” that does it justice.  Until that happens – assuming that it does happen – all we have is the somewhat rough recording that Bill sent to me.

Click here to listen to the original Clockwork Orange recording of “Your Golden Touch.”  The Doug Kershaw-produced version was very good, but this one is even better.

*     *     *     *     *

My thanks to Bill Ashley for not only answering my questions but also providing me with a copy of the original recording of “Your Golden Touch.”

Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, Bill isn’t sure when he’ll next be appearing live.  But if you travel to Key West or anywhere on Florida’s Gulf Coast once life is back to normal, check out the local concert listings to see if Steve Hopper and the Wolf Island Band are playing in the neighborhood.  (If you do get a chance to see them, I’d suggest you request “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Problems.”)

Clockwork Orange – "Your Golden Touch" (1967)

I was a fool to cry so much

I was a victim of your golden touch

Bill Ashley taught himself to play the drums in 1965, when he was a 15-year-old living in Paducah, Kentucky.  His first group was Clockwork Orange, which released a single titled “Your Golden Touch” in 1967.

I heard “Your Golden Touch” on Steven Lorber’s “Mystic Eyes” radio show in 1980.  He’s not sure how he became acquainted with the record – which didn’t sell enough copies to make the Billboard “Hot 100” – but he did.

After a fair amount of Googling, I was able to track down Bill Ashley and interview him about Clockwork Orange and “Your Golden Touch.”

*     *     *     *     *

2 or 3 lines: One of the most memorable and disturbing movies I ever saw was A Clockwork Orange.  I initially assumed that your band took its name from that movie, but you formed Clockwork Orange several years before the movie was released.

The first edition of A Clockwork Orange

Bill Ashley: Danny Powley, our singer, had read the book the movie was based on – we had no idea when we formed the band that there was going to be a movie.  Originally the band was named “The Clockwork Orange,” but we dropped the “the” at some point.

2 or 3 lines: So how did Clockwork Orange get its start?

Bill: The group was organized by Elliott Payne and Terry Frasier.  Elliott moved away and leadership of the band was taken over by Terry, a gifted guitarist who had been playing since he was five.

2 or 3 lines: Was everyone in Clockwork Orange from Paducah?

Bill:  Yes, we were.  In addition to Terry and Danny Powley, the members were Barry Yancey on bass, Steve Rudolph – who played the Hammond B3 organ and trumpet – and me.

2 or 3 lines: Did you play a lot of live gigs?

Bill: We were in high demand at colleges in the area – all the way from southern Illinois to Nashville.  We were gone every weekend playing, and we developed a great style and became very close.

2 or 3 lines:  What kind of music did Clockwork Orange play?

Bill: We were influenced by the psychedelic music of the day – groups like the Electric Prunes and Strawberry Alarm Clock, to name a couple. 

2 or 3 lines: “Your Golden Touch,” which was written by Terry Frasier, certainly has a psychedelic feel.

Bill:   Terry had begun to write his own songs and suggested that we record “Your Golden Touch” when we decided to release something original.

2 or 3 lines:  I had no idea until recently that “Your Golden Touch” was produced by Doug Kershaw, who was a fiddle player from Louisiana who sold a lot of record in the seventies – I guess “Louisiana Man” is his most famous song.  I understand that he wrote the flip side to “Your Golden Touch,” which was a song titled “Do Me Right Now.”

Doug Kershaw (circa 1969)

Bill: Doug Kershaw wrote that song on the way to the studio because we had no other material to record.  

2 or 3 lines: I take it that “Your Golden Touch” didn’t sell very well.  

Bill: We sold very few recordings, so we went back to doing live performances.  But the band just wasn’t the same without Steve.  He eventually did recover, but it took a long time. 

*     *     *     *     *

2 or 3 lines: Do you keep in touch with the other members of Clockwork Orange?  Are any of them still involved with music?

Bill: All of the original members of Clockwork Orange are alive and well, but none of them are still performing today except myself.  Terry Frasier still lives in Paducah, where I saw him several years ago – but quit playing guitar decades ago for some reason and never returned to it.  Danny Powley

went to Vietnam and never returned to performing. He lives in Paducah, too. Barry Yancey moved to Texas and never returned to performing.  Steve Rudolph eventually recovered from his motorcycle accident and lives in New Orleans.  I look him up whenever I play in New Orleans.  I last saw him this past January.

The Clockwork Orange (circa 1968)

2 or 3 lines: So you are still drumming?

Bill: Yes, I’m the only original member of Clockwork Orange still performing – 55 years after we formed the band.  I’m 70, and still perform regularly, mostly in Florida and along the Gulf Coast.  I often play with Steve Hopper, who is a very popular tropical rock, or “trop rock” performer, and have been on some of his albums – including Anywhere There’s a Beach, which was recorded in Muscle Shoals in 2017, and went to #1 on the trop rock charts.  

[NOTE: Click here to listen to the title track of Steve Hopper’s Anywhere There’s a Beach album.]

2 or 3 lines: So you’ve left Paducah for warmer climes?

Bill: I left Paducah in the early seventies and moved to Florida. I lived on Anna Maria Island, which is near Bradenton, for many years. The music scene on the west coast of Florida in those days was great. I usually played six nights a week with many excellent musicians.  I’m very glad I was able to keep performing music, and I’m sorry the others in Clockwork Orange decided to quit. I really miss the great times we had and the music we created.  I will never forget those times. 

*     *     *     *     *

The next 2 or 3 lines will feature a never-released demo of “Your Golden Touch” that Clockwork Orange recorded before they met Doug Kershaw.

Bill Ashley thinks that recording is superior to the Doug Kershaw-produced recording that I heard on the “Mystic Eyes,” and I tend to agree.

But I’ll let you and your fellow 2 or 3 lines readers decide that for yourselves.

Click here to listen to the Doug Kershaw-produced recording of “Your Golden Touch.”

Yes -- "Long Distance Runaround" (1971)

Did we really tell lies?

Letting in the sunshine

Did we really count to one hundred?

"I've suffered the tortures of the damned, sir -- the tortures of the damned."  

Those words are uttered by Alex -- the narrator and anti-hero of the 1971 film, Clockwork Orange -- after a government program intended to cure him of his violent tendencies goes very, very wrong.  Alex is attempting to portray himself as a victim rather than the sociopathic criminal that he is.

Alex suffers the tortures of the damned

I'm not a sociopathic criminal.  I'm not even an anti-hero, as much as I would like to be one.  (One of my favorite memories is of a female friend of mine seeing a photo of me taken late in my senior year of college -- complete with shoulder-length hair, horseshoe mustache, and thousand-yard stare -- and saying, "You looked dangerous!")

But I did suffer the tortures of the damned, sir, when I was trying to get back home last month from my annual Memorial Day trip to Cape Cod.

The day after Memorial Day -- the last of my extended weekend on the Cape -- started off innocently enough.  You regular readers of 2 or 3 lines know that I hopped in my hurting Chevrolet Sonic rental car (shout-out to the good people at Hertz -- thanks SO much, folks!), fired up the satellite radio, and drove to Falmouth, MA, for one final vacation bike ride.

The Cowsills

The proprietor of the bike store I patronized -- who was listening to the same channel on his satellite radio -- turned out to be a wounded Vietnam vet who had attended the Newport Folk Festival with his girlfriend (who was reputed to be a Providence gangster's daughter) and was good friends in high school with Billy Cowsill, the senior male member of the great pop group, the Cowsills.

I rented a bike, rode most of the length of the Shining Sea Bikeway (which ends in Woods Hole), and then returned to the bike store.  I hopped back in my car, left Cape Cod via the Bourne Bridge, and set my course for the Providence airport, where I would board an 8:20 pm flight to the Baltimore-Washington International airport.  If all went well, I would arrive at my home around 11:00 pm.

The Bourne Bridge

But all did NOT go well, boys and girls.  All did not go well AT ALL.

Shortly after crossing the bridge, my airline sent me a text to tell me that my flight had been delayed by two hours.  That meant arriving home around 1:00 am.  That's not what I would have chosen, but I'm sort of a night owl -- so I could live with it.

I stopped at Gene's Famous Seafood in Fairhaven, MA, my favorite place to stop for a farewell dinner after my Memorial Day jaunts to the Cape.

Gene's did not disappoint.  The whole friend clams were as delicious as ever.  And the Narragansett was ice-cold:

The Narragansett Brewing Company was founded in 1890 in Cranston, RI.  It's flagship Narragansett lager was for many years the best-selling beer in New England.  

Narragansett was purchased by the Falstaff Brewing Company in 1965.  (The government attacked the merger as anticompetitive in one of the silliest antitrust cases ever prosecuted, but which was not finally resolved in Falstaff's favor until 1974.)  

Both brands fell on hard times after they merged.  The Narragansett brewery was closed in 1981, and the last of Falstaff's ten regional breweries was shuttered in 1990.

Pabst Brewing licensed the Falstaff brand, but discontinued production after sales fell to only 1468 barrels in 2004.  (Total beer production in the U.S. in 2012 was 196 million barrels.)

But Narragansett has made something of a comeback.  The brand was bought in 2005 by a group of Rhode Island investors, and sales have been on the upswing ever since.  The readers of Beeradvocate.com give it a higher rating than its biggest competitors (e.g., Budweiser, Miller, Coors, and Pabst Blue Ribbon).

Today, Narragansett promotes its lager as "The Official Beer of the Clam":

That's a cute attempt to tie Narragansett to a famous local food, but I think they've taken things a bit far:

Note the slogan on the Narragansett can:

I think "Made on honor, sold on merit" is a relatively new slogan -- I don't see any evidence of it in the photos of older Narragansett cans and bottles I've found online.  (If any of you knows better, please let me know.)

After quaffing my Narragansett, I hit the road again.  Given the two-hour delay in my flight's scheduled departure, there seemed to be no particular reason to hurry to Providence.

Where the hell is my airplane?

GUESS AGAIN!  When I checked in for my flight, I learned that the previous Providence-Baltimore flight had been delayed sufficiently that I could have made it if I had gotten to the airport a little earlier.  (Live and learn, I guess.)

The Providence airport was almost deserted when I arrived at 7:30 pm.  There wasn't a single restaurant or bar still open.  And the only newsstand/snack store that was open was about to close.

I bought a Dr. Pepper and a Snickers bar and settled down for a long summer's wait:

Which was about to become longer.  My airline pushed back my departure time another two hours.  We were now scheduled to depart at 12:20 am.  Good grief, Charlie Brown!

Good ol' Southwest Airlines showed what a big heart it has by rolling out the snacked and soft drinks for all us weary travelers.  I snagged a free ginger ale (ice included!) and some Ritz peanut-butter crackers and made myself comfortable.

Not as comfortable as some of my fellow passengers made themselves:

By the time midnight rolled around, the departure lounge was only sparsely occupied -- most of the passengers who lived in Providence had gone home hours earlier, preferring to sleep in their own beds than to arrive in Baltimore at 1:30 am (which was far too late to connect to their final destination).

After collecting my luggage and climbing aboard the bus that took me to my parking garage, I arrived home around 3:00 am.  Ugh.

Here's "Long Distance Runaround," which was released in 1971 on Fragile, the fourth studio album by Yes.  I heard this album a lot in college -- along with Days of Future Passed by the Moody Blues, King Crimson's In the Court of the Crimson King, and Emerson Lake & Palmer's eponymous debut album.  It was the heyday of progressive rock, much of which was unadulterated crap . . . but I'm a sentimental guy, and often succumb to nostalgia for the music of my youth.

By the way, note that the vocals and guitars in this song are playing in common 4/4 time, while the drummer is accenting every fifth beat.  

Here's "Long Distance Runaround" -- plus the succeeding track from Fragile, "The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus), an instrumental that follows "Long Distance Runaround" without a break.  (Schindler's fish -- the correct scientific name is Schindleria praematura -- is a species native to the southern Pacific Ocean.  It is only about an inch long, and is one of the smaller vertebrates in the animal kingdom.)

Click below to buy "Long Distance Runaround" from Amazon: