Page 50 - Been There… Done That!

Gary Graham
well as writing for a couple of movies. His partner in the publishing business was a man by the name of Paul Sawtelle. Paul was a musical genius who scored a lot of movies for Twentieth Century Fox.
It was his suggestion that led to the Poor Boys. We were walking along one day when he said, “What you need to do is, you and Bob need to go back to Missouri and gather up some musicians.” So, I headed back to Missouri and Bob and I started putting together the musicians that would eventually be called The Poor Boys. The group we formed included Bob and me along with Eldon Freese on lead guitar and Tom West on drums
We decided to get musicians from back home because we knew what the L.A. music scene had to offer and all we were getting was people without talent or those who had been used up. I knew part of the attraction of the group was that we were not from California. In Missouri I had my parents’ place to put the band together and polish the act as well as make a little money doing it.
Coming up with a name was just about finding one we could agree on. We thought about the Renegades at one time and some other ideas, but we finally settled on the Poor Boys. We decided we would wear nice suits with patches on them, but I expressed the feeling to my manager that I didn’t want to wear something with patches. When I said I had to do that as a kid, his response was, that was even more of a reason to do it. There was also a change in the sound of our music in that we were more rock, featuring more guitar and bass and less pop sounding without keyboards.
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