Original subtitles

(tense music)

(screen crackling quietly)

- NBA champions. - Yeah.

- '78, '79 season.

Oh wait, different Sonics.

(rain pattering) (train horn blaring)

- They were before everybody and it was dark,

and there was a meanness to the guitar sound.

(rain pattering) (train horn blaring)

- Their influence on me

at Soundgarden is profound.

(rain pattering)

- You know, can you make a sound like The Sonics?

And I go, "Well,

first of all, you're not The Sonics." (chuckles)

Can you play like The Sonics?

(rain pattering) (train horn blares)

- They were driving it right to the max,

like, right, pinning the meter, you know?

(rain pattering)

- They're rooted in kind of '50s R&B, rock and roll,

but like, as played by a freight train.

(rain pattering) (train horn blares)

- Music that just kicked your ass.

- They sound fucking dangerous.

(train reverberating)

- [Jordan] I grew up on an island in the northwest.

When I was a kid, my father and I never really connected.

He was, and still is an umpire, so sports were his thing.

See, I didn't give a shit about sports.

Movies and music were my thing

and I hated his taste in music.

One day I was in my bedroom

listening to the latest Nirvana record.

I had it cranked.

My dad came walking by and stopped in the doorway.

I thought he was gonna tell me to turn it down,

but instead he said, "If you like this,

you should check out The Sonics."

Who the fuck are The Sonics?

Is he talking about the basketball team?

I just ignored him until he walked away.

Couple days later, I came home from school.

My dad had found an old copy of "Boom,"

left it resting against my door.

(sentimental music)

So I went into my room and put it on.

First Song, "Cinderella."

(upbeat rock music)

♪ Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, everybody ♪

- [Jordan] They instantly became my favorite band.

I was right around the ripe old age of 13

so naturally I thought I knew everything

there was to know about everything,

but this sounded like punk rock.

And historically speaking, these guys were almost 15 years

before the Ramones.

This even predated The Stooges.

Why didn't everyone know about this band?

And of all people, how the hell did my dad

come to know about these guys?

(sentimental music)

I just sat there staring at this album cover,

looking at these five badass dudes.

(sentimental music)

Who were they?

And what happened to them?

These questions would stick with me for years.

The Sonics were a total mystery.

That is until in 2008

when one of the most unlikely reunions

in rock and roll history took place.

This event sent me on a 10-year journey of discovery,

finally getting the answers to my questions,

and would lead me to one man in his unending determination

to make The Sonics boom.

But first, let's go back to 1960 where it all began

with these five badass motherfuckers.

Spin.

(upbeat rock music)

♪ Somebody knows ♪

♪ What you have done ♪

♪ About you carrying on ♪

♪ And having fun ♪

- [Jordan] Good slate.

♪ It was so wrong ♪

♪ 'Bout you had to play ♪

♪ Now you're gonna learn ♪

♪ That lying don't pay ♪

♪ It's too late, it's too late ♪

♪ You lied, you lied ♪

♪ Now you, now you ♪

♪ Will fry, will fry ♪

♪ It's better, it's better ♪

♪ Than hate him, than hate him ♪

♪ He's waitin', he's waitin' ♪

♪ He's waitin', he's waitin' ♪

♪ For you, whoa ♪

♪ You stayed up late ♪

(sirens blaring)

- (chuckles) It was kind of a dirty place in a way.

You know, some people have likened it

to like the Pittsburgh of the northwest, you know?

And it'd be like comparing London

and Liverpool,

a little rougher on the edges.

- Seattle is a big urban city.

Tacoma is a blue collar waterfront town.

All our dads were blue collar guys.

- Especially compared to Seattle,

Seattle there was a certain sophistication to it

that I think Tacoma didn't have, you know.

My parents moved there 1957.

I was 12 from Oklahoma.

Hence, that's why they call me Bobby Joe,

because everybody has two first names (chuckles)

in the Midwest.

(lively upbeat music)

- What got me all inspired about playing guitar

was I have an uncle.

He brought a guitar over to my house,

I'm guessing I was maybe eight or 10 years old.

And it was just an acoustic guitar.

Boom chick, boom chick.

I thought that was really cool.

He came back maybe two years later and had an amplifier.

Electric guitar was even cooler.

I mean that was so good.

That's why I started picking out stuff on my own.

- When I was about in the third grade,

a music instrument salesman came to the elementary school.

He looked at me and said, "Oh no, you kind of got

a little overbite.

You need to play the clarinet."

And I played it all the way through school,

all the way through middle school,

all the way through high school.

- Seventh grade, I got a snare drum.

I played in the junior high band.

And guys would come over and jam that I knew,

Gerry Roslie was one.

- I played accordion for three years,

and I hated every lesson my parents made me.

- [Jordan] Hey, Gerry, who were your favorite singers

at that time?

- Little Richard, of course, played the piano and sang.

Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley because of his energy.

I saw him come out and I heard them girls screaming,

and I just got goosebumps.

I'm thinking, what the hell?

These girls going crazy for this guy.

You know what? That's it.

No more accordion.

I'm changing to piano and organ.

♪ One, two, three, four ♪

(upbeat music)

- I was a senior in high school

the day that I met Gerry Roslie in the music room,

and he was banging on a piano.

And I thought what he was playing was real cool.

That's rock and roll, you're playing, right?

And he said, "Yeah." Blah, blah, blah, blah.

Said, "That's great.

There must be a sax around here someplace."

So I found a sax, I'd never played a sax,

but the reed went on the same way as a clarinet.

So I started playing sax and Gerry was playing piano.

And I thought, oh, this is cool

until the music director kicked us both out of the room.

And he said, "Hey, I got a piano over at my house.

You want to come over and play some more?"

I said, "Yeah."

So I took this kid's sax, I didn't even know it was,

went over to Gerry's house and we played

and that's how he and I got started.

- We got to play in my folks' living room.

You know, you said we were always a garage band,

but for once we made it in the house.

- From that moment on, started plotting and scheming

and meeting other guys.

And how do we get into a rock and roll band?

- I didn't start playing

until I was a senior in high school,

but I'd been listening to music and all that.

I was aware of the music scene,

what there was in Tacoma.

There was Little Bill and The Bluenotes and The Wailers.

And I used to go see The Wailers all the time.

They were tough.

I mean, they were so cool.

(upbeat music)

- [Jordan] The Fabulous Wailers

were one of the most influential

and successful northwest bands around at that time.

With the success of their nationally charting hit

"Tall Cool One,"

the band even appeared on Dick Clark's American Bandstand.

- We all liked The Wailers.

They were local gods to us.

- I felt like standing up and throwing chairs

and screaming and yelling

out of pure, absolute adrenaline rush

listening to The Wailers.

- [Jordan] These guys were local heroes.

The band's lineup consisted of John Greek, Richard Dangel,

Mike Burk, Kent Morrill, and Mark Marush.

And eventually, buck Ormsby would take over on base,

but we'll get to that later.

(upbeat music)

♪ Well I met a little girl ♪

♪ Walking down the street ♪

♪ Said what's your name ♪

- Yeah, now, Larry had a band,

well, he and a kid named Mitch Jaber and Stuart Turner,

and I can't remember the bass player's name,

but he played a big standup bass.

And our drummer had a snare drum,

but he had to rent a high hat to go with it

when we got a gig.

- I don't think Larry knew

that I had been scheming about weaseling

my way into his band.

There wasn't much he could do about it

'cause I was bigger than him at the time.

- And suddenly, I think the bass player's name was Larry.

He was out and Andy was in.

- [Jordan] Andy and Larry would call their band

The Sonics.

And aside from the two brothers,

the band was a bit of a revolving door of musicians.

This was all about the change.

♪ I wanna hold your hand ♪

♪ Just a little bit of love ♪

♪ I wanna hold your hand ♪

♪ Just a little bit of love ♪

♪ I wanna hold your hand ♪

- [Rob] Gerry, Bobby, and I were playing in a little band.

I believe it was called The Imperials.

Over across the way, there was this other little band

playing called The Sonics.

Boy, you know, if we could put the three of us together

with those two guitar playing brothers,

we'd have a pretty serious band.

- [Jordan] While out looking for a new organ player,

The Sonics would stumble across

none other than Mr. Gerry Roslie.

- And it was Andy saying, "Well, a sax player?"

And I say, "Yeah, my friend Rob."

- Gerry said, well, I've got a good friend to play sax,

another good friend that's a killer drummer.

- [Andy] Roslie said, "We'll get ahold of Bob Bennett."

So we did.

- [Bob] You know, when I joined the group,

I played a lot louder than any of the other drum.

I don't remember any other drummers playing as loud as I.

- [Rob] Bob was totally dynamic and breaking heads

and breaking sticks.

- I would break my pedals, the heads.

I broke a lot of stuff.

(upbeat music)

- Gosh, he played so loud

and so aggressively,

I think we all started doing that.

- Here's Bob and he just beat the crap out of his drums.

And I went, well, I like that. (imitates cranking)

I turned my amp up

and next thing you know, we had people pasted to the wall.

- [Bob] If you were standing 15 feet from my bass drum

and it didn't ruffle your shirt when I hit it,

then I wasn't hitting it hard enough.

- [Rob] We wanted to play "Little Richard."

We wanted to play "Louie Louie."

We wanted to play anything that rocked.

- [Larry] Next thing I remember is Bob and Gerry

and Rob being there, and everything changed.

- But when the five of us got together,

something magical happened.

- I mean, nothing was the same anymore.

We weren't playing a lot of these stuff,

and we weren't playing just instrumentals.

Everything all of a sudden got hard, real hard.

But we all felt like we wanted to play that way.

- [Andy] So anyhow, here's Bob and Gerry

and Rob Lind and myself.

There's the lineup that people know of today.

(rain pattering)

(audience applauding)

(upbeat music)

♪ Rosalie, Rosalie ♪

- [Bob] We did "The Witch" down in my parents' basement,

and we would play it at these gig.

And people loved it.

- We came to the awareness

that we needed to do a record, a single.

And that way we could ask for a little bit more money.

I think we're making three or 400 bucks a night.

You know, we thought, "Hey, we can maybe ask for five."

♪ C'mon and let me take you home ♪

♪ Please, please, Rosalie ♪

♪ C'mon and let me take you home ♪

- Buck and Kent Morrill from The Wailers

had this little record company, Etiquette Records.

We were gonna hit on him to see if we could record

with his record company.

(upbeat music)

- [Jordan] That brings us to Buck Ormsby.

Buck, a Tacoma native formed his first band

with his best friend, Bill Englehart,

Little Bill and The Bluenotes.

They were formed in 1955.

Buck was only 14 at the time.

Generally considered to be the first

true garage band in the northwest,

Little Bill and The Bluenotes were also trailblazers

when it came to throwing their own gigs.

Buck was tired of the turnouts

and weak pay from school dances

so he took his band outside city limits,

and they started throwing their own teen dances

and sock hops.

These dances would attract thousands of teens.

And while this would eventually become

the industry standard,

Little Bill and The Bluenotes were the first.

♪ Please, please, Rosalie ♪

♪ Thank you for me, go now ♪

- [Jordan] Later in the early '60s,

Buck became the bass player for The Fabulous Wailers.

That's his kickass base

playing on the now legendary Wailers "At The Castle."

Him and Kent Morrill, also from The Wailers,

decided to form their own record label, Etiquette Records.

Full two years before The Kingsmen

would release their version,

which would obviously go on to be one

of the biggest hits of the '60s,

Etiquette released The Wailers

featuring Rockin' Robin Roberts

doing their cover of Richard Berry's "Louie Louie."

(up-tempo music)

It was a big hit in the northwest

and put Etiquette on the map.

At this point, Buck was in search of the next big thing.

- I felt that The Wailers were getting a little stagnant

and I said, I went, I'm gonna go find a group

that's gonna blow you away.

- So I went to Buck and I said,

"Hey, we got this band, blah, blah, blah."

And he said, "Well, I'll come out and listen."

- So anyway, I said, okay, let me hear what you sound like.

You know, let me hear some songs, you know?

And he started playing Wailer's songs.

You guys are playing cover songs.

I mean, do you have any original songs?

- And we were going over a song

that we were writing called "The Witch."

- So it started out and went (vocalizing).

That thing and I said, "Hey.

Okay, now this is interesting, you know?"

- Gerry had written this song called "The Witch,"

which the way he had originally intended it to be

was a dance song, do the witch.

- [Buck] You know, do the Boston or do the twist

or do the whatever it was.

- Buck goes, "No, no, no, that's stupid."

And he says, "Write some lyrics for it."

(upbeat rock music)

Gerry wrote some lyrics and his long-haired wench

and she'll make you itch.

I go, what the hell.

Can you get away with that, you know, but.

- Yeah, I don't know why.

I just thought, I've always liked that kind of spooky stuff.

(upbeat rock music)

♪ She's gotta long black hair ♪

♪ And a big black car ♪

♪ I know what you're thinking ♪

♪ But you won't get far ♪

♪ She's gonna make you itch ♪

♪ 'Cause she's the witch ♪

- We gotta record this.

This is good.

I want you guys to sign with the label.

You know, they were all young

and we had to get the parents and all that but.

- Yeah, we went to some studio.

They had two tracks.

You couldn't do much, but we couldn't do much anyway.

- [Buck] This is where they made ads for local people

like Chevrolet or something, or Joe's Barber Shop.

- Small, funky little place

and basically playing live

because there wasn't enough tracks.

- [Buck] Give these guys, you know, some room

because it's gonna be a little bit more raucous.

- But Buck was our defender

'cause we were blowing out the speakers and vacuum tubes

and walls and everything were being destroyed

because we were in there at full volume.

- [Buck] He started playing

and the guy just got real nervous, you know?

And I said, just kinda calm down, you know?

It'll be okay, you know?

And I mean, these things were going a little bit in the red.

- Just used to looking at VU meters

that stay within the white usually.

And this was all peg.

- The guy put a little bit of compression.

I said, I don't want any compression.

I don't want anything to slow this thing down.

I just wanted to rock, you know,

get a little blood coming off the walls.

And the guy was real nervous about it

because Gerry's screaming,

that's what kinda blew him away, I think.

The guy is screaming.

Whoa! Hey, what's this about?

- I just did it because it felt good, you know?

It felt good and I thought,

well, this would be a good place

to jump on a good scream here, you know?

♪ Whoa ♪

They called me, "the northwest screamer"

and I thought, gee, what a pat in the back.

I've been called nothing but an asshole

all my life. (chuckles)

♪ And do you remember ♪

♪ That I told you so ♪

♪ Gonna do you in ♪

♪ 'Cause she's the witch ♪

(upbeat rock music)

- [Jordan] After they recorded "The Witch,"

Buck ran into a bit of a problem.

- Nobody would play the song.

Hey man, it was pretty harsh. (chuckles)

(upbeat music)

- First of all, what I wanted to do with that

was get Pat O'Day interested.

- [Gerry] He was the program director for KJR,

who was the big station here.

But back then, he was the big, big shot.

- Listened to it and he says, "I can't play this."

And I go, "Why?"

- I know that Buck had dropped off a copy weeks before

but I think O'Day used it for a coffee holder.

- And I said, "Pat, if you play this record, it'll be a hit.

I know it will."

And he said, "I can't do it."

He says, "I'll tell you what, Buck,

see what you can do with other stations,

some of the B stations, you know?"

So we'd go into whatever station

that we were in the town at that time,

and we would take, I'd take the record in.

- [Rob] It got played on some subsidiary radio station

so that the high school kids were starting to hear it.

- [Buck] So, I got charts, took the charts back down,

and I gave, I showed Pat.

So he went over and he heard them

and he said, "I can only play it after 3:00."

And I said, "Great."

- Next thing we know, KJR started to play "The Witch."

And they wouldn't play it any time of the day,

except after 3:00 p.m., after the kids got out of school.

- Because they didn't wanna upset the housewives at home

because they thought it was devil music.

(woman screams)

- I get a phone call from my aunt

and she says, "Have you seen KJR's Fab 50 lists?"

It was in the Seattle PI.

And I said, "No."

She said, "Well, you go buy a copy of it."

So I went and bought a copy and well, hell,

"The Witch" debuted at number 26.

- We played it a couple times

and it sold 10,000 copies in like two weeks.

- [Buck] And you'd hear people driving around

their hot cars, radio blasting,

and you'd be hearing rock and roll.

And then you'd hear "The Witch" and you'd go, holy.

What, what happened here, you know?

- We got to number two on the top 50, the KJR,

which was the big station,

and number one was Petula Clark's record "Downtown."

When Pat O'Day was writing his book,

he said, "Oh, no, you guys were number one by a long way.

We just couldn't put devil music number one.

So we put you guys number two."

So we found out 35 or 40 years later,

actually we were number one.

(sirens blaring)

- Gee, soon as the record came out,

it started selling so much,

but came to us and said,

"Hey, you gotta write another original

for the flip side of 'The Witch.'"

- [Rob] And Buck said, "Okay,

you guys got our recording session tomorrow."

We went, oh okay, recording session.

- And we were playing at the red carpet,

and we had to record the next morning.

- They didn't rehearse a whole lot.

You know, their writing time was kinda like in the studio,

or maybe a night before or something like that.

- After the gig, everybody, they emptied the place.

And we sat there, in 30 minutes we had the cycle.

- We went to Kearney Barton's

and his studio was on Denny Way.

- I said, "Kearney, this is what happened.

When we recorded this other song called 'The Witch.'"

I said, "The guy got real nervous."

I said, "When you hear these guys,

they're gonna blast you out but it's okay."

Kearney got it.

He didn't get nervous about anything.

I mean, when you have a song called "Psycho," you know.

- [Andy] We set up and did everything

basically live, you know?

- Etiquette Records was a real low budget operation.

And so, when you say how many takes?

Basically it was one take.

(upbeat rock music)

- Buck was there prodding everybody, you know?

Do it this way, let them do this.

- We put Rob Lind back in a,

down the hallway into the bathroom

so we get this little echo sign.

He said, that's right. That sounds good.

You know, we needed to get this drum sound

because Bob was just a kicker, you know?

I mean, the guy was a real strong drummer.

- So we do it, we lay down the band track

and bang, Buck says, "Okay, great.

Gerry, get in there and sing it."

So Gerry goes in, sings it,

comes out and goes,

"Um, guys, I could probably do a better take on it.

Let me go back in there and do it again."

Buck say, "No, no, no, no, that's great.

Move on. Let's move on."

♪ Because she's a witch ♪

- And then you come on.

♪ Psycho, you're driving me ♪

I mean, that just got out there, you know what I mean?

People go, whoa, I've never heard anything like this before.

♪ Whoa, baby ♪

♪ You're driving me crazy ♪

♪ I said baby ♪

♪ You're driving me crazy ♪

- [Jordan] Etiquette Records reissued "The Witch"

with "Psycho" as its B side.

- It was just as big a hit as "The Witch" was.

- [Jordan] With the successful release

of "The Witch" and "Psycho,"

the band's popularity started to explode in the northwest.

- Whatever they were working for before

as far as money goes,

they started making a lot of money.

- [Jordan] It was at this point that Buck and the band

decided to head back into Kearney Barton's studio.

- [Buck] And I knew from recording that song there

that we were gonna be able to do an album there.

- [Jordan] Only this time to record their first

full length album.

- It took us about three or four days

just to get it all done.

- [Jordan] So you record the whole album?

- Yeah. It wasn't done.

Yeah.

(upbeat rock music)

♪ Oh ♪

♪ Whoa ♪

(upbeat rock music)

- It had that energy and that power and you're right.

And today it stands out.

(upbeat rock music)

There would be people lined up outside to see these guys,

new fans, you know?

And most of them were like girls who loved them, you know?

- [Rob] Gerry was the champion with the pretty girls.

- Couldn't get enough of looking at them.

- Loading the beer into the bathtub,

and then getting ready for

what we hoped to be a climatic night for each one of us.

I'll need to be 17 and be able to do that.

♪ Baby ♪

♪ Oh, you're driving me crazy ♪

♪ I'm going out of my head ♪

♪ Now I wish I was dead ♪

♪ Whoa ♪

♪ Psycho ♪

- [Jordan] Pat O'Day took notice

of the band's recent success,

and he started to book The Sonics at his shows.

(upbeat rock music)

- [Rob] Playing in front of 25,000 people

hanging out backstage with The Beach Boys and Jan and Dean.

- The Righteous Brothers,

I mean, there's Jay and the Americans.

Oh, I mean, just tons of bands.

(upbeat rock music)

♪ She's the sharpest one ♪

♪ In the whole ♪

- [Jordan] And with The Shangri-Las?

- (chuckles) Man.

(vehicle sputtering)

- Summertime comes along

and now we're playing Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,

Friday, Saturday, Sunday night.

Part of that tour was gonna be playing with The Shangri-Las,

and we were asked to learn their songs and would we do so

and then back them up.

Whoever it was gave me a stack of records,

albums of The Shangri-Las.

And he says, "Would you guys mind

backing up The Shangri-Las?"

Well, it didn't compute up here.

I said, "Oh yeah, okay."

And I took the albums thinking, okay,

we're gonna have to learn a few other tunes.

Well, we never did.

- We didn't even open the albums,

we didn't listen to them.

I didn't know how they went.

- [Andy] You know, we carried these albums around

at one motel to the next motel.

- And when we got there and they brought The Shangri-Las,

I mean, I didn't know how to start the song even.

- Don't know them, but, okay. (chuckles)

And we went out.

- So they start playing

and we're taking breaks when there wasn't any break.

And they playing through

where there's supposed to be brakes,

probably playing in the wrong key.

It was horrible.

- You know, they started doing the "Leader of the Pack"

and it was all about this motorcycle dude.

And no, Jimmy don't do it. No, no.

Well, Roslie was riding his keyboard like a motorcycle,

and he had a big plastic bottle with three Xs on it.

And when she was going, no, no, no, no,

I was down on my knees by Gerry going, no, no.

And the audience was howling with laughter,

and they didn't know what it was about.

And they turned around and saw making fun of him.

- "Leader of the Pack."

I mean, that thing, it's full of sound effects, you know?

Harley Davidson's (imitating motor revving)

in the middle of all this.

I remember we're playing along,

not knowing any of the chords,

and they're struggling to try to get,

I turned around and I said to Bob, I say,

"Bob, whatever you do, no breaks, just keep playing."

- Plus our lack of talent

to play that kinda music in the first place.

We shouldn't have been playing that kind of music.

- When we got through butchering their set,

they said, "Well, we'd like to thank our backup,

the curtains," you know?

Because we just totally screwed up their set.

- These girls just ripped the shit out of us

when it was done.

(slow music)

- [Jordan] The band would go in and record

their second album.

While "Boom" was another local hit in the northwest,

it failed to pick up nationally.

The Sonics felt it was time to part ways

with Buck and Etiquette Records.

(slow music)

- I don't know, I think we kinda lost our mojo

at that point, right after.

After Sonics' "Boom"

it felt to me like we'd lost our way.

By then we'd said adios to Etiquette,

went to Jerden Records.

We wound up going down to LA.

I think Gerry kinda composed a few things

on the way down that were rough ideas of songs,

hoping that maybe we'd come together in the studio.

Gerry was not a producer.

He paid the bills,

forked over the money for the studio time,

that sort of thing.

But he didn't really have any guidance capability,

whereas Buck, Buck could hear things

and so yeah, that was a big, that was a problem.

It was a mistake.

- [Jordan] The band went down to Los Angeles

to record their follow up to "Boom."

The studio sessions resulted in the album,

Introducing The Sonics.

Upon its release,

the record was considered a massive,

critical, and commercial failure.

(somber music)

- I think we're just getting tired of it maybe.

And we all wanted a change

or just not to play anymore.

- It wasn't fun anymore.

There was too much fighting going on,

not really big fighting, but you know?

It just...

- Typical teenagers, I guess, you know?

I know everything, you guys don't know nothing.

We all thought we knew more than the other guys, you know?

- I'm not sure for what reasons Bob left

for a group called Merrilee and the Turnabouts.

And we got, we changed drummers,

the drummer that was with Merrilee and the Turnabouts

was now a Sonics drummer

but he didn't, he was a good drummer,

but didn't play like Bob.

I mean, it didn't feel right to me.

- And the band just didn't smoke

like we wanted it to, you know?

- Ultimately Rob and I left

because I went into the Air Force

and he went into the Navy.

- I immediately got drafted and I had been flying the band,

I had a private pilot's license.

So I thought, well, okay,

if I gotta go to Vietnam, I'm gonna be flying something.

So I wound up in naval aviation

and went off to officer candidate's school.

- The last night that we played on together as a band

Gerry was so bummed out, he didn't want to sing

and we did a lot of instrumentals.

We did a bunch of Freddie King songs

and just a bunch of stuff that fill in

because Gerry didn't feel like singing, you know?

And when the gig was over, I said, "Hey Gerry,

I hope you're not gonna do this again tomorrow night."

And he says, "That's it."

And he threw everything and stomped off the stage

and that was the end of Gerry Roslie.

- Yeah, it was over.

(somber music)

- Larry took a job at a large insurance corporation

working in their fraud prevention area.

- I put my guitar away

and virtually, I don't know that I ever touched it again

until the mid '80s. - [Jordan] Wow.

- I had a piece of paper, said I was qualified

to teach history and wood shop.

And I thought, okay, well I'm gonna go do that for a while.

So I did and that turned out to be a 31-year run.

- I started an asphalt paving business.

- Bob ultimately moved to Honolulu

and got into the new car business.

(sentimental music)

- I had a daughter that I raised as a single parent

and I had an acoustic guitar

that was leaning against the wall.

And I hit a cord once in a while and put it down.

But she didn't know anything about what her dad

had done earlier in his life.

(sentimental music)

- And once in a while I'd see Larry

when I'd come through town

but it was just that.

We reached a point where everybody just went that way

but we're still all good friends.

There was no animosity or anything like that.

- I don't know if we'd all like to forget about The Sonics,

but, you know, and move forward,

but I think we all still have a lot

of The Sonics in us, you know?

Because it was a great band

even though we didn't know it at the time.

(sentimental music)

- [Jordan] And that was it.

The end of The Sonics.

Everyone moved on and the music was lost in time.

Or so they thought.

I'd always heard that The Sonics

had an even bigger following overseas,

especially in England.

(rain pattering faintly)

But how is this possible?

Their music wasn't even distributed

outside of the northwest.

(airplane rumbling)

I flew to London to find out.

(upbeat rock music)

♪ Whoa, have love ♪

♪ Whoa, baby I will travel ♪

♪ Uh-huh, uh-huh, have love ♪

♪ Whoa, baby I will travel ♪

♪ I said if you need loving then ♪

♪ Mm, hmm, I'll travel ♪

♪ Yeah, I'll travel from main to Mexico ♪

♪ Just to find a little girl ♪

- [Jordan] Along the way I met up with my buddy

Yvan Serrano, AKA DJ Healer Selecta.

Yvan's a well-known DJ in the area,

specializing in all things punk and garage.

He took me through Camden to introduce me to some friends.

♪ Or sail, yeah, yeah ♪

♪ Have love ♪

♪ Whoa baby, I will travel ♪

- [Jordan] The crazy thing was I kept seeing Sonic shit.

It was everywhere.

♪ I'll travel ♪

♪ Whoa ♪

- [Jordan] Yvan introduced me to Bruce Brand.

He's played drums in about a million different bands,

most notably with Billy Childish in The Headcoats.

- Yeah, they made it all right

to go (imitating drum thumping)

which I've never considered doing before I heard The Sonics.

- Yeah. - I thought yeah,

The Sonics influence was heavy,

heavy on The Headcoats.

- Yvan kept telling me about this garage rock compilation

from the mid '80s.

He said it was ground zero for The Sonics in London.

So he took me to the local record store

to show me this thing.

- Yeah, this compilation man.

Rockabilly Psychosis was made by band

and Big Beat records in the UK.

- So this is really how The Sonics were discovered

in Europe.

- In Europe on the garage

and rockabilly and psychobilly scene.

- Yeah. - That's that compilation.

But because of that compilation, many people like myself

and a full generation discovered The Sonics.

- [Jordan] It was at this time that we ran into Danny Dawkins.

Between shifts at this shop,

Danny's also in a kickass band called the Caezars.

When I told him what we were up to, he jumped right in.

- Basically they're the sort of band

that got me into music.

Although my dad sort of made compilation tapes

for when he was driving round in his car

and he had this one particular tape with "Strychnine" on it.

And when I was about eight or nine years old,

like, he played these tapes over and over

while we were traveling places.

And every time we got back in the car,

I used to always ask, "Is the tape with 'Strychnine' on?"

So, even from that young age

it sort of got its claws in me.

And they've had an impact on

all of my musical tastes.

You know, they were the one band

that sort of turned me on to music really.

So, if it wasn't for them,

you know, I probably wouldn't put grease in my hair.

I wouldn't listen to the music that I do,

and I definitely wouldn't work here.

'Cause they sort of started the whole thing off on me.

- [Jordan] Yvan called up a couple guys

he wanted me to meet, PJ and Paul.

They own Dirty Water Records.

These guys have basically devoted their entire lives

to getting garage and punk rock out to the masses.

- First had a record with Sonic

when I was maybe 14 years old.

- Which was how many years ago? - That was a long time ago.

Yeah. Long, long time ago.

- [Jordan] So, when you first heard The Sonics,

was it like on a compilation? - It was, yeah.

- [Jordan] Okay, do you know

which compilation that was?

- It was called "Rockabilly Psychosis

and the Garage Disease."

- [Jordan] So that was really the one album

that kind brought The Sonics over here, right?

That was kinda the first?

- I think it exposed them to people

for the first time really, yeah.

- The first time I had ever heard of them

I was at a gig in Boston, that's where I'm from originally,

and there's a band called Lyres,

which is a well-known garage revival band.

And their third to last song was just incredible.

I mean, I couldn't believe how great it was.

And I went to talk to the guitar player, Danny, after the gig.

I said, "Danny, what was that third to last song?

It was amazing." He said, "How did it go?"

And it was actually "The Witch" by The Sonics.

And I went, (vocalizing).

He goes, "Dude, they all go da, da, da."

(group laughing)

And there was no internet at the time,

and I couldn't find any songs records at all.

It took me years.

- Whereas if you listen to The Sonics,

some of those guitar sounds

just shredding through the speakers

like no one else ever did at the time.

I mean, you listen to The Beatles

singing "I Wanna Hold Your Hand"

and then stick on any Sonics records you like next to it.

I mean, come on.

- I think about the songs as well like they define

and defy the '60s.

So if you listen to the song, it sounds like a '60s band

but it also sounds like a fresh new band today.

And kids are gonna listen to it in a thousand years

there's no question about it.

It's not lost any of its power. Never will.

- Where do you think that they sit, like historically?

Or where do you think they should sit, I guess.

- They should sit (clears throat)

much higher than they do.

I mean, everyone I know that knows The Sonics

thinks that they're were most influential

and important bands that it's ever been.

But it was a long time ago. Yeah.

But anyone who likes rock and roll

and doesn't know who The Sonics are,

they don't know what they're talking about.

- [Jordan] It was clear the band

had a big following over here.

But I still couldn't see how.

How did this little northwest secret band

become so popular overseas?

(match crackling)

(upbeat rock music)

♪ Some folks like water ♪

♪ Some folks like wine ♪

♪ But I like the taste ♪

♪ Of straight strychnine, hey, hey ♪

♪ You may think it's funny ♪

♪ That I like this stuff ♪

- Being a teenager in the mid '70s

there was not really any definitive library

you could go to to find out what was cool music

and listen to and stuff.

- That there was no internet then.

So in order for me to learn about something,

it really was reading, reading magazines,

or hearing it from classmates.

And most people didn't really like punk rock.

You're kind of ostracized, you know?

You weren't Utopia or the Grateful Dead,

- [Kurt] You know, I just remember having the,

it must have been like a slightly later edition

of the Etiquette 45 of "The Witch" and "Psycho"

on the same 45.

- Each of us had a jukebox, me and Anne.

And we staged dances in our homes.

So, The Sonics were in heavy rotation

even for us in the '70s

'cause that's really fine dance music.

You can't not dance.

♪ If you listen to what I say ♪

- They really had such a rock and roll influence on us

because they weren't R&B, they weren't jazz musicians.

They were definitely rock and roll musicians.

It started a whole kind of a rock movement

I think in Seattle

- It's got just screaming soul vocals

and pummeling music.

And it's like, wow, what more do you want

as a 15-year-old kid, you know?

♪ Hey, whoa, strychnine ♪

♪ Hey, hey, strychnine ♪

♪ Hey, hey, strychnine ♪

- It was the kind of thing that would've been shared

by your buddy's cool big brother, you know?

- It was all very, very mysterious.

You know, there was not even any photos of The Sonics

you could look at.

There was the two record covers,

there was not any magazines you could look at

and the two record covers, you couldn't even

see any detail in it.

The first album has that kind of dark green

and you'd look at it, it's like,

whoa, those guys look like

they're the toughest guys of all time.

They're in the alley

and you know they're just carrying knives

and ready to jump you.

And they're so tough that just listen to that sound.

- [Jordan] Slowly, The Sonics became cult legends

throughout the northwest.

The guys in the band had no idea.

♪ There's a guy in town who gets all the chicks ♪

♪ From what I hear this dude he ain't no hick ♪

♪ He's big and tuff ♪

- [Jordan] While their music was starting to inspire

the next generation of musicians,

they all became pretty, well, normal.

♪ Dig him 'cause he plays it so cool ♪

♪ He's the hustler, yeah ♪

♪ He's got a car that's never been shot down ♪

- [Jordan] Do you remember the first time

you heard The Sonics?

- I don't. I mean, it probably,

it would have to be in the late '70s

or something when I was becoming aware of music

that was northwest-oriented.

All around here, including Heart, Sonics, Hendricks,

all, there's band called The Heats.

A lot of local bands that have come out here

around the late '70s, early '80s.

- I mean, when I first started

kind of trying to figure out like that I might sing,

Gerry Roslie was definitely like

one of the people that I was emulating or trying to.

You know, I think he's much more

soulful than I am. (chuckles)

but his voice is just amazing.

- The voice is mean, it's a growl.

It's aggressive, it's fun, it's wild.

It's wild and chaotic, which is an element of rock

that is often left aside.

- [Kurt] The Seattle music scene of my era,

it was just like something that everybody knew.

Everybody had those records.

They were all scratched up and trashed

and played 10 million times.

- I remember like rock parties,

but like punk and metal parties would happen.

And I remember hearing "The Witch" a lot back then,

and there was a couple of scenes of music that were going on.

I was kind of in more of the metal scene in Seattle,

and there was the punk scene that was Green River.

And then there wasn't a ton of us

so we'd all go to each other's parties

and play some 45 Grave and then some Motorhead,

everybody could agree on, and then.

- Stooges or they'd play Sabbath or you'd hear Black Flag,

or The Sonics,

- You know, it'd be all,

it'd be part of the party scene, I guess.

I don't know how, of Seattle in the early '80s.

- Like a band would play in the basement of the house

then afterward, like, it would be like a kegger style,

like someone would bring a keg

and someone would be just playing records

and it would turn into this huge dance party.

It was super fun and like, it was always some,

at some point during the night,

The Sonics would come on.

♪ When you walk through the door ♪

♪ Hold your head up high ♪

♪ And don't afraid of the dark world ♪

♪ I say don't, don't ♪

♪ Don't, don't be afraid ♪

♪ Don't, don't ♪

♪ Don't, don't be afraid ♪

- And I didn't really start hearing about them a lot

until I became a recording engineer in the middle '80s.

And I started running into bands

who were talking about them a lot,

like Gas Huffer and Mud Honey.

And the guys from the Mono Men.

And a lot of bands I ended up working with

who would say, "Hey, you know,

get us that Sonics drum sound."

I go, "Sonics drum sound?

What are you talking about?"

And I have to go find these records and go, okay.

- They were rocking, they were aggressive.

They're mean, it was a... huge drums.

- And it sounds dangerous.

That's what I think about it.

The Sonics, they sound fucking dangerous.

And that's what's awesome about rock and roll

is when you feel like you're doing something wrong

or you might, something bad might happen, but it's great.

- Later on when guys like Pearl Jam and Soundgarden

and they broke through the '80s

kind of layer cake, overproduced,

MTV, artifice type sound,

and got back to the sound of The Sonics.

(up-tempo rock music)

♪ I feel bad ♪

- [Nancy] It was like, it busted back into

something that The Sonics had started, I thought.

- We as a band in the '90s

going around doing interviews as the presidents

were constantly asked about Seattle and the scene,

because, you know, that package,

that unit of grunge in Seattle was being sold

as a thing to the masses.

And we constantly defended the,

what we thought was the real kinda core attitude of Seattle,

which is Party Rock, the Kingsmen, the Wailers,

The Sonics, the Young Fresh Fellows,

Paul Revere and The Raiders.

We kept saying, like, there's a rich history

of that kind of vibe,

that kinda like small band, garage band,

and even angling towards joyful party time.

And grunge be, although amazing and great

and incredible creative spurt

is a bit of a anomaly to me, to us.

And we used to kinda say like, okay,

if you wanted to learn about Seattle, go backwards.

(up-tempo rock music)

- I was lucky enough to like tour

with the remaining members of the MC5.

And so, I like asked those guys

if they were familiar with Sonics.

They'd never heard of them at the time.

Like it just didn't make it outside of the northwest.

- We look back on them now as this legendary band,

but really at the time, they were kind of

a northwest secret in a lot of ways.

You know, people up here knew about them,

but in Florida or New York or whatever, who knows?

- Over the years I heard these comments from

some of the early English bands

that started to spread the word.

It's good that musicians hear it,

but what we need to do is get the fans

and the public to hear it.

(melancholic music)

At the end of The Wailers is,

that was my key band and for performing.

And that kind of did the same thing in the end of the '60s.

Same as Sonics, it got a little bit dry here.

So I moved up to Seattle

and I formed another band with my friend Ned.

It was called Junior Cadillac,

but it was a really good band.

It was made up of players from the group

called The Frantic and Wailers.

(melancholic music)

- [Jordan] After a successful 13-year round

of playing bass with Junior Cadillac,

Buck decided it was time to move on.

(melancholic music)

- It was just always bugged me, you know,

because I kept thinking about Sonics' music.

Particularly in my heart or whatever in my gut,

I said, man, you know,

people gotta hear what we did.

And I said, I'd really like to

you know, start the label again

and reissue those albums

because I thought people never got a chance

to hear these things.

And I reactivated the label in 1985

and I reissued those albums,

including several other albums that we had.

- [Jordan] The locally reissued album

sold much better than expected.

Buck started to realize that his hunch was right.

The Sonics had developed a serious underground

cult following in the northwest.

He felt it was finally time to get this music out

and into the world.

- I started going to Europe

and it was a convention over there,

big music convention in France.

I would take big suitcases

of packed with vinyl records of my reissues. (chuckles)

I didn't, and this was the first time

I'd been to this actual convention,

and I gave away vinyl records

to other major labels, independent labels,

to anybody that I could give them to

that I thought would be somebody

that would be able to, promoters,

did the same thing with promoters.

There were promoters there.

Then the next year I did the same thing

and I just kept hauling them out there.

And I'd always meet new people

and meet people from different countries

and give them the records.

- [Jordan] Year after year, Buck would take suitcases

filled with Sonics records over to Europe,

handing them out to anyone,

literally anyone he thought might understand

how great these guys were.

Anyone he felt might help get the word out.

- So I went over there for five, six years

and did the same thing.

Just give, just gave them away.

- [Jordan] It was around this time that Buck would license

the song "Psycho" for a garage rock compilation

that was to be released only in Europe.

Rockabilly Psychosis and the Garage Disease

ended up being a big hit all over Europe

and outside of the northwest,

this would be most people's introduction to the band.

- In France was right across from the Louvre

in the old entrance to the Louvre.

And I went into this one record store,

and I look at it all the,

he had record covers all over his walls.

And the first, when I walked in the door,

the first one I saw was Sonics' "Boom."

I mean, he had hundreds of them all over his store.

And the first one was Sonics' "Boom."

I saw it up there and went, whoa, okay.

One of those guys got my records.

Someone showed it to them,

somebody played it for them.

They got it from somewhere.

- [Jordan] Because of this release

and all the records

that Buck had been bringing over by hand,

people's interest in this mysterious group

from the northwest started to grow.

With zero information about the band available,

The Sonics became this unicorn of the punk scene.

Who were these guys?

How did this amazing music stay hidden for so long?

Well, all around the world,

The Sonics' popularity continued to grow.

The guys in the band still had no idea.

- Buck actually, if it had not been for Buck,

we would, nobody would remember us.

I mean, there would be some people,

but I mean, the band would not be on the map.

Buck Ormsby from Etiquette Records went to Europe

and came back with articles and magazines and stuff

that were talking about The Sonics.

And he says he had talked

to lots of promoters who'd be interested

in having The Sonics go to Europe and tour.

I just didn't believe him.

I just wrote it off as, yeah, right.

- Buck had lined up all these places

for his play in Europe, you know?

But at the time, we couldn't get anybody on the same page.

I think at that particular time,

I was for it but Gerry was not.

And from time to time though,

Gerry would call me on the phone

and I remember one time saying,

"Well, we ought just leave sleeping dogs lie,"

(chuckles) or something stupid like that.

♪ Hey, little girl ♪

♪ I play a guitar ♪

♪ I even drive ♪

- [Jordan] In 1998, Buck licensed "Here Are the Sonics"

and "Boom" to Norton Records.

For the first time in 40 years,

The Sonics records were finally distributed nationally.

- If today The Sonics are getting the recognition

for something that we did 40 years ago,

it was like lighting the fuse

and it just took a slow burn to get to there.

- It was probably in the '90s

when it was like, geez, you know?

It was a lot of people that know who The Sonics were.

- It was so shocking because,

and people were telling me,

"Hey, did you know there's a magazine in California,

it's got you guys, naming the guys' band in it?"

I says, "No."

I hear little bits and pieces of stuff.

- I didn't know too many musicians in Honolulu,

but when I did and they found out

that I was from The Sonics,

they'd go, "Oh yeah, Sonics."

And I'm going, "How do you know about The Sonics," you know?

- I was getting glossy magazines,

teen-oriented magazines,

and I couldn't read Italian or German or anything

but here I recognized my picture

and I knew the word Sonics when I saw it.

I could tell that this is a big deal over there.

- [Jordan] While the band's newfound fame

continued to grow,

the reunion offers kept coming in.

- It actually started in about 2005,

a New York promoter called Larry

and said, "Hey, I want you guys

to come headline this Cavestomp Festival."

And Larry said, "Well, we don't play.

There's no way we can do that."

- He kept asking us a lot.

He'd say, "You guys wanna play for us?"

And we said, "No.

We haven't played in 40 years."

- I didn't even realize when they were telling,

"Oh, we're gonna try to get back together and everything."

I'm going, yeah, yeah, you know?

- That year came and went.

2006, he came back and Larry said same thing.

We don't play.

You know, Rob's an airline pilot.

I work in an office.

We don't do that.

- That he wouldn't give up.

Finally, he started saying,

"Okay, I'll give you this amount.

I'll give you this amount of money."

And he kept saying, "I'll give you this amount of money.

I'll pay for your hotels.

I'll do all this stuff."

And we're thinking, geez, this guy really likes us.

- And then Larry and Gerry and I started talking

and we said, "Well, you know, it might be kind of fun.

Maybe we ought to do it."

So we all converged in Seattle,

Andy, Bob, Gerry, Larry, and me,

and we rehearsed for a couple of days

and we talked about it.

Andy was very negative

in terms that he just didn't wanna travel.

He didn't wanna travel.

- I mean, I didn't have any real objection.

I didn't have any bad taste in my mouth for him.

I just didn't feel like doing it

and I didn't feel like I was particularly invited to do it.

And I think that, so it just didn't feel right for me

to interject myself into it.

- And Bobby Joe, he lives in Honolulu,

and the commute back and forth was too much.

- I just couldn't do it even though I wanted to

and I kept saying, yes, I want to,

but I knew that I wouldn't be able to.

And I think after a while they knew it too.

- So, the three of us, Gerry, Larry, and I,

rehearsed for a year, probably.

I'd fly up to Seattle

and we'd get together for a couple days

and we were just learning

how to relearn our instruments again.

Larry hadn't played a guitar in 35 years.

I hadn't touched the sax, and Gerry hadn't sung.

And so, he was working on building his pipes up.

Larry and I were working on playing our instruments

and getting back into shape.

Finally, he said, "You know, I think

we might be able to pull that off."

- And so beginning of 2007, this promoter call Larry again,

and Larry said, "Well, tell you what,

we're rehearsing a little bit."

The guy got all excited, "All right, great."

When do you wanna do it?

And Larry said, "No, no, no, no, hold on.

I'll tell you when we're ready."

- But when we learned that we could actually play,

I was pretty excited about it.

- We took it down, I think about a month.

This promoter was going nuts.

"Are you guys coming? Are you guys coming?"

And we kept saying, "Well, hold on, we can't tell you."

- We finally said, "Okay, we'll do it."

- [Jordan] For the first time in 40 years,

The Sonics would reunite and play a show.

- [Host] This is The Sonics!

(upbeat rock music)

♪ Hey, hey, hey ♪

- So they got us behind the curtain and everything

and we thought, oh god, here it goes.

- Here's an insurance dude and an airline pilot

up there playing rock and roll to a full house.

- It was jam-packed.

I mean, it was an amazing concert.

It was the first time they wanted me to go back

because they thought maybe I could work with a sound person

to get their sound or whatever.

- Zoop, they pull the curtains and we all, oh god.

And here the people we looked out there,

I'm not kidding you, it looked like it did

when we quit 40 years ago.

They were all the same age.

They were all like 18, 19, 20-year-old, 17-year-old.

It was just this deja vu all over again.

- People came from all over the world.

I mean, there was people that came from

Norway, London, France.

- We played the Friday night show, which was sold out,

and we played the Saturday night show, which was sold out.

- So we kept going into it

and pretty soon they were out diving off the stage, oops.

And doing a mosh pit.

And everything was out.

We're in. (chuckles)

They liked us no matter how old we are.

- Yeah, I was still suspicious

but when I saw the reaction

I went whoa, man, was I wrong.

- People asking for autographs,

we haven't gotten that since the '60s of course.

♪ Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, Cinderella ♪

(upbeat rock music)

- [Jordan] The two reunion shows at Cavestomp

were a huge success.

Offers came flooding in from Europe.

- For us in The Sonics in the northwest,

we thought going on tour meant going to Spokane.

We'd never been to Europe, you know?

- [Jordan] In 2008, The Sonics Tour Europe

for the very first time, selling out every show.

Shortly after, they decided it was time

to play a hometown gig.

Halloween night at the Paramount Theater in Seattle.

It was around this time when I caught wind of the reunion.

I immediately called my dad and told him about the show.

We grabbed tickets and I flew up from LA for the gig.

This would be the first concert

my dad and I would go to together,

but not the last.

Over the next eight years, the band played

to sold out crowds all over the world.

This little regional band from the '60s,

this little cult band from Tacoma, Washington

after 40 years we're finally out touring the world.

They were no longer just a northwest secret.

- We got to tour and see the world and play again.

- Every place that we played was jam packed, you know?

- [Gerry] England, France, Spain, Italy, Greece.

- [Rob] Stockholm and Oslo, Berlin,

Madrid, Seville.

All kinds of those, all the way down to Athens.

- [Larry] And I'd have people come up and say,

"Yeah, my dad said I've gotta come here

because he used to hear you guys when he was a kid."

- Went down, played all the major cities in Australia.

- Yeah, I don't think we lost a whole lot of that power

or that being in your face, you know?

- I still to this day, I look back and I say,

how could that happen?

♪ Cinderella ♪

(upbeat rock music)

- You know, just seeing all those young people

coming in and going, "Wow, this is The Sonics."

Never thought I'd see it.

- [Jordan] The reunion lineup would eventually solidify

with legendary SoCal drummer, Dusty Watson

and stepping in on bass, another northwest music icon,

Freddie Dennis.

♪ You knew it was wrong ♪

♪ 'Bout you had to play ♪

♪ Now you're gonna learn ♪

- [Jordan] After touring nonstop

for eight consecutive years,

the band finally decided to record a new album.

It'd be their first, in almost 50 years.

They enlisted garage rock aficionado, Jim Diamond,

to produce the album.

(upbeat rock music)

♪ Bad Betty on a Bonneville, yeah ♪

♪ She looks fast when she's sittin' still ♪

♪ High boots and looks to kill ♪

- [Jordan] To celebrate the release of their new album,

The Sonics booked a hometown show in Seattle

at the Moore Theater.

♪ Yeah, go Bad Betty ♪

♪ Woo, go Bad Betty ♪

♪ Cause we're gonna rock and roll tonight ♪

♪ Oh, Bad Betty on a Bonneville ♪

♪ I can tell you she crashed her daddy's Coupe de'ville ♪

♪ Hopped like a tick on a whole brick steel ♪

♪ She's Betty on a Bonne' ♪

♪ Yeah, Bad Betty ♪

♪ Woo, go Bad Betty ♪

♪ Yeah, go Bad Betty, gonna rock and roll all night ♪

(crowd chattering)

(sentimental music)

- I never ever thought I would see The Sonics

for a long, long time.

It just seemed out of the realm of possibility.

I remember there was like just this huge

sort of sense of anticipation like The Sonics were playing.

The crowd was amped

We were amped, like insanely stoked

to be playing with The Sonics.

(sentimental music)

All my life I've sort of focused on like The Sonics,

The Stooges, The Scientists,

and eventually we played with all of these amazing bands

that I've loved since I was like in my early 20s,

and I feel like I'm one of the luckiest people out there.

(sentimental music)

Describing music or art or something

is like, it's just you have to experience it, you know?

(sentimental music)

(audience clapping and cheering)

- [Crowd] Sonics, Sonics, Sonics.

Sonics, Sonics, Sonics.

Sonics, Sonics, Sonics.

(sentimental music)

(upbeat rock music)

♪ Baby, you're driving me crazy ♪

♪ I said baby, you're driving me crazy ♪

♪ The way you turn me on ♪

- I had that feeling.

I mean, it was really rock and roll and it was hard.

It really did feel good.

One of the few shows that felt really good.

♪ Psycho ♪

(muffled upbeat rock music)

(sentimental music)

- It was out of body. Yeah.

I think that's what rock and roll is good for.

Like, if you're doing it right, you should leave your body,

you should kind of exalt and kind of come alive.

There's this theory about rock and roll, right?

There's the body and the mind.

Get to a point where if you keep playing,

you'll lose consciousness.

If you lose consciousness, you can't keep playing.

You know what I mean?

Like, you get to a point where you lose yourself

and you become just like atoms and energy.

That's the crossroads.

So when I played with The Sonics, I got to the crossroads.

It's just like a completely all enveloping

time disappeared, you know?

I was inside of something that I had admired and loved

and it was a real honor.

(audience clapping and cheering)

- [Audience] Sonics, Sonics, Sonics.

Sonics, Sonics, Sonics.

Sonics, Sonics, Sonics.

Sonics, Sonics, Sonics.

(sentimental music)

(sentimental music)

(crowd chattering)

(sentimental music)

- What the band means to me.

You're never too old to rock and roll.

(crowd chattering)

- Thank you so much.

(crowd chattering)

(sentimental music)

- Long before Ramones, long before,

you know, Ramones are supposed to be

the first punk band.

I just, no.

No, we got you beat, you know? (chuckles)

And the Sex Pistols,

nah, we got you beat.

Today the fuse just keeps going,

it just keeps getting bigger, you know?

The Sonics have made it.

They're there, you know?

(sentimental music)

- [Jordan] The Sonics are my favorite band

and if it weren't for them,

I'm not sure my father and I

would have the relationship that we do today.

After going to that first reunion show in 2008,

we made a pact to go to at least one rock show a year.

Since then, we've knocked some pretty big names

off our concert bucket list.

That's us last summer at a Metallica show.

It was awesome.

We're two completely different people,

but our love for this band brought us together

and today he's one of my best friends.

(sentimental music)

That's the thing about music.

It brings people together.

It has the ability to change people's lives.

And sometimes it can even change the world.

Are The Sonics one of the most important bands of all time?

Do they belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

Probably.

But to be honest, who gives a shit?

The one thing I can say for sure is this.

When these five guys got together,

they fuckin' rocked.

(upbeat rock music)

♪ Say there's a girl ♪

♪ Who's new in town ♪

♪ Well you better watch out now ♪

♪ Or she'll put you down ♪

♪ 'Cause she's an evil chick ♪

♪ Say she's the witch ♪

♪ She got long black hair ♪

♪ And a big black car ♪

♪ I know what you're thinking ♪

♪ But you won't get far ♪

♪ She gonna make you itch ♪

♪ 'Cause she's the witch ♪

♪ Well, she walks around late at night ♪

♪ Most other people sleeping tight ♪

♪ If you hear her knocking on your door ♪

♪ You better sneak away ♪

♪ Oh baby, oh no ♪

♪ Now you know the score ♪

♪ 'Cause I set you straight ♪

♪ But you better be careful ♪

♪ Before it's too late ♪

♪ She gonna make you itch ♪

♪ 'Cause she's the witch ♪

(upbeat rock music)

♪ She walks around late at night ♪

♪ When most other people sleeping tight ♪

♪ If you hear her knocking on your door ♪

♪ You better stay awake ♪

♪ Well you know you will ♪

♪ Say don't you know ♪

♪ And do you remember ♪

♪ That I told you so ♪

♪ Gonna do you in ♪

♪ 'Cause she's the witch ♪

♪ Ah hoo ♪

♪ Ah hoo ♪

(rain pattering)