Before he became the first breakout star in Saturday Night Live history, Chevy Chase was a musician. He must’ve taken the idea pretty seriously, too, because he was in two different bands in the same year back in 1967. One of those bands was The Leather Canary (otherwise known as The Bad Rock Band or The Very Bad Jazz Band), which featured Chase on drums, Walter Becker on guitar, and Donald Fagen on the electric piano. Chase didn’t think he was a good enough drummer, so he quit, leaving Becker and Fagen to form Steely Dan a few years later.
Chase had a little bit more success with a psychedelic rock band called Chamaeleon Church. In addition to playing the drums, Chase also played the piano and provided vocals. Other members included Ted Myers on rhythm guitar, and Tony Scheuren and Kyle Garrahan on lead guitar and bass. Chase had apparently been lobbying Myers to form a band after his previous group, The Lost, had broken up. In early 1967, Myers met prolific record producer Alan Lorber, who was instrumental in creating “Do You Believe in Magic” by The Lovin’ Spoonful. That meeting scored Chamaeleon Church a publishing deal.
From there, Chamaeleon Church recorded their self-titled debut album in roughly two weeks. During those sessions, the band members found themselves clashing with Lorber, who, according to Myers, “didn’t have a clue about ‘psychedelic.’” While Myers said that he didn’t think Chase or Garrahan experimented with psychedelic drugs, he later explained that his own experiences with them inspired the songs he wrote back then. One of those songs was the “Eleanor Rigby”-sounding “Come In To Your Life,” which you can listen to below.
Chamaeleon Church wasn’t together for more than a year, but in that time, they made a TV appearance on the ABC Easter special Preview. On the show, the band members lip-synched to their single, “Camillia is Changing.” Their album bombed following its release, and the group moved to Boston, where they played just three more live gigs. Chase and Garrahan moved back to New York, and the others joined the short-lived band Ultimate Spinach.
Chase, of course, decided to focus on comedy moving forward and landed a spot on SNL in 1975 after a chance encounter with Lorne Michaels earlier that year.
The post Chevy Chase Drummed in a Psychedelic Rock Band Before He Was A Star (& His Bandmates Are More Famous Than Him) appeared first on VICE.
