Rascals to Reunite for Three Shows

September 25, 2012, 5:24 pm

By JAMES C. MCKINLEY JR.

Steven Van Zandt has been trying to persuade his musical heroes the Rascals â€" the influential white soul group known for hits like “Good Lovin' ” and “Groovin' ” - to reunite since the early 1970s.  But the four original members, who started the band as the Young Rascals in New Jersey in 1965, agreed to perform together only once since â€" at a private benefit concert in 2010.

Now Mr. Van Zandt, the actor, producer and longtime guitarist with Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band,  has persuaded the Rascals to do a set of shows that will not only be the first concerts the quartet has performed together since the early 70s, but will also tell the group's history through archival footage, narration and dramatic film segments.

“It's a hybrid of a live concert and a Broadway show, through a mixed-media presentation of a theatrical event,” said Mr. Van Zandt, who is producing the shows. “The four original guys will be performing, as they would in a regular concert, with a couple other elements mixed in â€" their own narration of their story, the history of the Rascals, done on these big screens, and then segments of actors playing them at critical points in their career.”

The show will run for three nights, from Dec. 13 through 15, at the newly reopened Capitol Theater in Port Chester, N.Y. Mr. Van Zandt has started a fund-raising campaign on the Kickstarter Web site to help underwrite the production, although he intends to finance it himself even if no donations are raised.

Gene Cornish, the Rascals' guitarist, said the foursome had resisted reuniting for decades, despite several lucrative offers.  (Three members did a brief tour in 1988.)   But Mr. Cornish said they changed their minds after jamming at the 2010 Kristen Ann Carr Fund performance in New York City to raise money to fight cancer.  “It was a really an ‘aha moment,' ” Mr. Cornish, who is 68, said.  “We realized how much we missed playing together.”

Mr. Cornish said the band agreed at that point to play another group of concerts if Mr. Van Zandt, who arranged the benefit, could come up with a show concept that would be more meaningful that a simple reunion to make money.  He said he and the other band members - the keyboardist and singer Felix Cavaliere, the vocalist Eddie Brigati and the drummer Dino Danelli â€"  were bowled over by the script Mr. Van Zandt wrote for them. “I was just overwhelmed to read our legacy on printed paper,” Mr. Cornish said.

The Rascals, who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997, were one of the most popular blue-eyed soul groups of t he mid-1960s, emerging from the post-Twist bar scene in New York and New Jersey.

After they topped the Billboard singles chart with a cover of the R&B song “Good Lovin' ” in 1966, they had a string of Top 20 hits in the late 1960s, among them “Groovin' ” in 1967 and “A Beautiful Morning” in 1968. They also wrote the civil rights anthem “People Got to Be Free” after the 1968 assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.

By the time the group broke up in the early 1970s, the Rascals had earned a reputation as a principled band on civil rights issues. The band always demanded that a black act appear on the bill with them at their concerts, a stance that cost them some dates in the South.

The show, titled “Once Upon a Dream,” will feature lighting and visual elements designed by Marc Brickman, a veteran who most recently did Roger Waters's “Wall” tour.  Tickets go on sale on Sept. 28.