"It was like Dorothy landing in OZ…"
In 1967, a year after graduating from Phoenix, Arizona’s Cortez High School, The Spiders – an Anglophile garage band based around cross-country lettermen Vince Furnier (vocals), Dennis Dunaway (bass) and Glen Buxton (lead guitar) – grew tired of being big fish in a small pool. After they brought in rhythm guitarist Michael Bruce, their second single, Don’t Blow Your Mind, had given them a local hit, reaching the dizzy heights of No.11 in Tucson. They were on the radio and in demand on the South-West club circuit, but Tinseltown beckoned.
“It was like Dorothy landing in Oz,” Dennis Dunaway recalls of the band’s arrival into Los Angeles. “We were young, had a vision, so just jumped in a van and drove there.”
With no money for a hotel, the quintet (initially completed by drummer John Speer) slept in Griffith Park. As dawn broke they begged stale sustenance from a truck-based sandwich vendor as he binned his previous day’s stock. “We pushed Vince to the front, as he was the skinniest and most pathetic-looking. That night we walked down Sunset Boulevard and it was unbelievable; The Byrds were here, The Doors there, Love… We’re like: ‘Okay, we’re gonna have to start all over. We’re gonna have to up the ante to compete here.’”
The band were able
