Billy Rancher (February 28, 1957Reader, Rocky Road, p.116. – December 2, 1986Reader, Rocky Road, p.243-244.) was an American rock vocalist and songwriter, front man of The Malchicks, Billy Rancher and the Unreal Gods, and Flesh and Blood (all based in Portland, Oregon). One of the most prominent performers in the Pacific Northwest music scene in the first half of the 1980s, he died of cancer before reaching the age of 30.Reader, Rocky Road, passim. The Unreal Gods were one of the original (2007) inductees of the Oregon Music Hall of Fame.Previous Music Hall of Fame Honorees - 2009 and earlier, Oregon Music Hall of Fame, accessed 2015-10-01.
Childhood and youth Rancher was the child of Swedish immigrant Astrid Rancher (née Svensson) and New Jersey-born Lithuanian-American Joe Rancher, who met in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, married, and moved to Los Angeles.Reader, Rocky Road, p.17-18. Three months after Billy, their oldest, was born,Reader, Rocky Road, p.18. they moved to Alaska, where they lived 12 years before moving to Portland.Reader, Rocky Road, p.18.Baross, Rocky Road (documentary), 1:21-1:35. Billy had two younger siblings: Ellen (b. March 6, 1960) and Lenny (b. April 17, 1961).Reader, Rocky Road, p.18. His father died in 1978.Reader, Rocky Road, p.64. In 1980, sister Ellen married Steve Pearson of Seattle band The Heats (later The Heaters), though Billy and Pearson never hit it off well.Reader, Rocky Road, p.18-19.
He was an all-city shortstop playing baseball at Portland's Madison High School, and won an athletic scholarship to Mount Hood Community College, but dropped out to focus on music.Reader, Rocky Road, p.20-22. His first professional band, the Malchicks, scored some local success and gained attention by quickly throwing together permits for a public tribute performance the day after John Lennon was shot, but broke up over musical differences and over lead guitarist Lenny Rancher, Billy's younger brother, being too heavy a drinker at the time even by the standards of a hard-drinking crowd.Reader, Rocky Road, p.26-48. While in the Malchicks, Rancher met Karen Sage, who would remain his girlfriend for the rest of his life.Reader, Rocky Road, passim. p.43-44 for the Lennon tribute.
The Unreal Gods Based mainly on Rancher's reputation from the Malchicks, his new band Billy Rancher and the Unreal Gods scored a favorable mention from John Wendeborn, music critic of Portland's leading daily newspaper, The Oregonian before they'd even gigged.Reader, Rocky Road, p.58. They opened to a packed house at a Southeast Portland bar, Tippers, on June 14, 1981.Reader, Rocky Road, p.59-60. Bill Reader describes their sound as "melodic pop... rock/ska/new wave/rockabilly"; Rancher himself called it "Boom Chuck Rock" after one of his own songs, "Boom Chuck Rock Now".Reader, Rocky Road, p.60. By the end of the summer they were playing several nights a week, at various venues, and had established themselves as the city's best band,Reader, Rocky Road, p.67 et.seq.. making a major dent in the Seattle scene as well.Reader, Rocky Road, p.69. Mentions that that summer they played Astor Park and the Hall of Fame.
Go-go dancers, glam makeup and outrageous costumes (leopard-skin prints, pajamas) stood the Unreal Gods in contrast to the "punk..., skinny-tie new wave..., and macho working-class rock'n'roll" bands that otherwise dominated the Portland scene.Reader, Rocky Road, p.70. They scored a gig warming up for reggae star Peter Tosh at Seattle's Paramount Theatre, though it proved to be one of the rare times they completely failed to win over an audience, who did not appreciate their theatrics (including a giant simulated spliff and fake onstage gun violence) and their white-boy take on ska. This was also the time of Rancher's first bout with cancerReader, Rocky Road, p.75-80.
Starting with a December 21, 1981 show, the Unreal Gods pretty much created the roughly 1,000-capacity Lung Fung Dragon Room as a performance venue, both for all-ages and 21-and-over shows.Reader, Rocky Road, p.93 et. seq. Among the regulars at these shows was the young Courtney Love.Reader, Rocky Road, p.96. They went back into the studio in Seattle to record with Louis X. Erlanger as producer and made plans with Erlanger for an East Coast tour and an opportunity to showcase in New York City. However, the relationship quickly soured and they headed east with no firmed-up gigs, just places to crash with keyboardist Alf Ryder's New Jersey family, the Delias, several of whom had minor music-industry connections.Reader, Rocky Road, p.120-124. Matti Delia arranged for Bruce Springsteen to be at their September 29, 1982 show with his guitar at a Westwood, New Jersey club called On Broadway. Rancher was coached to invite Springsteen up on stage, but declined to do so; despite some reports to the contrary, Springsteen never appeared onstage with the Unreal Gods.Reader, Rocky Road, p.125-127.
Being in the New York area, the band managed to do some recording and pursued several music industry connections, but without any real success other than a good 2-day recording session with engineer Larry Alexander at the Power Station. The New York events led to a break with longtime manager Steve Hettum, and the band churned through several more managers over the next few months.Reader, Rocky Road, p.127-134. Still, they soldiered on. By the time of Portland's 75th Rose Festival in June 1983, they had enough of a repertoire to play 75 different songs in the course of two shows at Lung Fung.Reader, Rocky Road, p.145.
In the spring and summer of 1983, besides playing frequent Portland gigs, they played shows in Seattle; as in Portland, they were the biggest draw in town. They also played in Tacoma, Washington and Vancouver, British Columbia.Reader, Rocky Road, p.150. By the end of November they had signed with Clive Davis at Arista Records. More precisely, Arista had signed Rancher as an individual, but he already had an earlier contract with the band members that was intended to prevent a lineup shuffle in such an event.Reader, Rocky Road, p.151-157.
Signed to a label, the Unreal Gods could no longer make major decisions for themselves, and they performed only occasional Portland shows while Arista decided what to do with them. Davis assigned Peter McIan as their producer. McIan reworked some of their songs, for example insisting on adding bridges, and got them to do some demo tapes that Dave Stricker, at least, found too formulaic; tried unsuccessfully to get the band to change its name; and, in general, tried to get the band to narrow their style so that they would be easier to market.Reader, Rocky Road, p.158-163. By late May 1984, they were at Westlake in West Hollywood, California, working with McIan but not getting on well with him.Reader, Rocky Road, p.166-168. The sessions went poorly, the band's relationships with each other and Rancher's relationship with Karen Sage were both suffering, and, worst of all, Rancher had a recurrence of cancer, this time in his abdomen.Reader, Rocky Road, p.167-173.
The band played a few Portland gigs before Rancher entered cancer treatment. He patched up his relationship with Karen Sage, underwent chemotherapy, and successfully fought off a $25 million lawsuit by one of the band's former managers, William Gladstone.Reader, Rocky Road, p.174-179. The band tried to play some gigs without him: "a stupid idea" in Ryder's words, "horrible" shows in DuFresne's.Reader, Rocky Road, p.176. He had just enough energy to do a solo acoustic performance at a December 7, 1984 tribute to John Lennon (on the fourth anniversary of Lennon's death), at which he publicly announced his medical condition.Reader, Rocky Road, p.177. A few Unreal Gods gigs were planned for late January and early February, between his chemo and his surgery, but the first one, on January 26, 1985 went poorly and the band basically broke up on stage.Reader, Rocky Road, p.179.
Recordings, etc. The Unreal Gods recorded quite a few times, and were extensively videotaped by David Jester, who videotaped most of their live performances.Reader, Rocky Road, p.60 et. seq. Although most of this material remains unreleased, there were at least two official album-length releases (the self-released Boom Chuck Rock Now in 1982 and the Locals Only-released Made in Hong Kong in 2000) and there is extensive footage of the Unreal Gods in Jan Baross's KOIN-TV documentary Rocky Road about Billy Rancher. (The latter is also the name of Bill Reader's 1996 biography of Rancher.) Before they'd ever played publicly, the band recorded two songs ("Go Go Boots" and "Rockabilly Queen") at Wave Studio in Portland.Reader, Rocky Road, p.55. With a small investment from the drummer's father, Dr. John Flaxel, in 1981-1982 they recorded the album "Boom Chuck Rock Now" (self-released May 30, 1982) at Portland's then-new High Tech Recording.Reader, Rocky Road, p.85 et. seq., which also lists all the tracks. Release date mentioned on p.101. While the album received airplay on numerous Pacific Northwest radio stations, it was widely agreed that it did not live up to their live show.Reader, Rocky Road, p.85 et. seq. KGON, Portland's leading radio station at the time, gave it no play at all.Reader, Rocky Road, p.85 passim, especially p.112-114.
On August 31, 1982 they recorded a 30-minute concert performance for Don Blank of KOIN-TV; in fact, the concert took multiple takes over the course of four hours.Reader, Rocky Road, p.119-120. The sessions later with Erlanger later that year seem not to have produced any finished tracks.Reader, Rocky Road, p.120-121. The five songs recorded in two days with engineer Larry Alexander at the Power Station, paid for again by John Flaxel.Reader, Rocky Road, p.128-129, 134. Alf Ryder's relative Joe Delia produced the Power Station sessions, as well as some less successful sessions later that year at Crystal Studios in Los Angeles.Reader, Rocky Road, p.134. The New York and Los Angeles sessions eventually emerged in 2000 as Made in Hong Kong.Reader, Rocky Road, p.136 documents the band's intent to release this; in the event, the actual release was posthumous for Rancher. The 1984 Arista sessions with McIan did not result in any finished tracks, or at least none finished to either the band's or Arista's satisfaction.Reader, Rocky Road, p.167-173.
The band made at least two music videos. A performance of "Uptown" was filmed at Portland's Pittock Mansion in 1982.Reader, Rocky Road, p.138-140.A visual excerpt can be seen in Baross, Rocky Road (documentary) at about 9:01. "The Police Tol' Me" was shot as a mix of stage performance and narrative video in Los Angeles in late 1982 or early 1983.Reader, Rocky Road, p.137-138. "A glimpse" of this video shows up in the 1984 Teri Garr film Firstborn according to Reader, Rocky Road, p.150-151.Excerpts of "The Police Tol' Me" video can be seen in Baross, Rocky Road (documentary), 7:21 and 7:42.
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