The latter group–amateur musicians all–is here to learn from the portly, copper-maned master. Through three 100-watt Marshall amplifiers that threaten to shake a pair of gold-rimmed specs from the tip of his nose, Professor West is elucidating some of the finer points of Deep Purple’s four-chord epic “Smoke on the Water.” Abruptly, he stops. “We blew an amp,” he announces, turning to his pupils. “Now, how did I know that? With all that noise, how could I tell?” Easy: certain portions of his anatomy, West explains, cease to vibrate.
Joan Jett probably has a different system, but West’s lesson wasn’t lost on those who hit Miami three weeks ago for the first-ever Rock ’n Roll Fantasy Camp. About two dozen men and three women made the trek to learn from, hang out with and jam beside a tour-bus load of high-mileage rockers: Nils Lofgren, of Bruce Springsteen’s fabled E Street Band; Foreigner vocalist Lou Gramm; Mark Farner of Grand Funk Railroad; the Rascals’ Felix Cavaliere; Rick Derringer, and others. Inspired by baseball fantasy camps, which offer grown men a chance to play catch with former big-league stars, the rock camp was born of a partnership between promoter David Fishof and John Phillips, an Arkansas supermarket magnate who sold out to Wal-Mart. The idea’s a natural, as anyone who’s ever seen a 41-year-old health-care exec in a gold Rolex and Ferragamo boat shoes leap up from his drum kit for a round of high-fives can attest.
That man, Gary Brown of Boca Raton, Fla., pretty much embodies the camp’s targeted demographic. He’s an affluent baby boomer who once spent the night outside Madison Square Garden waiting to buy Grand Funk Railroad tickets. He drummed seriously in his youth, but then fell prey to the dreaded day job. Now he’s determined to make the most of the camp’s four-day, five-night stretch. “I’m up maybe 22 hours now,” he says on the afternoon of the camp’s second day. “We were jamming in here before and somebody said, “Oh, wow, it’s lunchtime.’ I was like, man, I can always eat.” John Alder, a pharmacist from Portland, Ore., received his trip as a 45th-birthday gift from his family. “You’re looking at some of the best people in rock and roll,” he says. “Last night I was playing guitar next to Nils Lofgren, with Lou Gramm singing “All Right Now.’ When am I ever going to get a chance to do this again?”
Well, actually, an encore is scheduled for New York in July. For about three grand (plus airfare) you, too, could spend your days like the pioneers in Florida did: morning and afternoon instrumental, vocal and recording clinics; buffet dinners followed by evening jam sessions and a closing-night all-star benefit concert. In between, you can rub shoulders with the men who make the music. Heck, you can even eat cornflakes at 9 a.m. with Leslie West.
Which is not as scary as it sounds. As rock stars go, these guys are downright presentable. West, who says he used to have “a big drug problem,” has been clean since ‘76 and now rises at 5 or 6 in the morning to hit the links. Mark Farner has found God. In fact, campers who signed up for his songwriting workshop learned about rock and Scripture. (“God created this dude called Lucifer…”) But nobody cared. The rockers and campers got along far better than Keith Moon and the average hotel room. “You guys are really making us feel comfortable,” Alder told Gramm at breakfast one day. “The way we make a living–that’s all that’s different,” said Gramm.
And, of course, musical proficiency. “Are we going to find the next Jimi Hendrix? I don’t think so,” says Mark Rivera, the camp’s musical director and a sax player who’s blown with everyone from Billy Joel to Peter Gabriel. “But that’s not what this is about.” For Frank Gonzales, 27, from El Paso, Texas, it was about singing with one of his idols. On the camp’s third night, he and Gramm traded verses on Foreigner’s “Double Vision,” an experience that lit Gonzales up like a Laser-Floyd show. “It was just like in slow motion,” he says. “I’m not perfect, but rock and roll isn’t supposed to be perfect.” It’s just supposed to be loud–and hit you in all the right places.
