When LA-based power-poppers Candy released their debut Whatever Happened To Fun… in 1985, it followed four years of gigging, writing and demo-recording that had assured them priority billing on the Hollywood club scene.
Managed by Howard Marks, who also looked after Kiss’ interests back then, the colourful quartet seemed to have a bright future. Yet, within a year, charismatic vocalist Kyle Vincent had departed and the group split into two. Bassist Jonathan Daniel, drummer John Schubert and new guitarist Ryan Roxie formed Electric Angels, moving to New York, while Gilby Clarke put together Kill For Thrills, before moving into his celebrated role as replacement for Izzy Stradlin’ in Guns N’ Roses.
Candy were formed in 1981 by high-school friends Vincent and Daniel, after Vincent had been lured to Hollywood to join Daniel and John Schubert in Bang Bang, which imploded after just one gig. The group’s new moniker was borrowed from Terry Southern’s ribald 1958 novel.
“The name fit real well next to Sweet, Kiss, Queen, Starz and Slade,” notes Daniel. “I wanted us to be the punk Monkees, the mainstream Ramones or Mötley Crüe with sneakers! Glam was exploding in the Hollywood underground then and we were just boys enjoying our summer.”
“We never had a ‘glam’ vision, only a power pop one,” Vincent asserts. “I had no idea what glam was. We wanted to be The Raspberries, The Bay City Rollers, with maybe a Ramones edge.”
After holding auditions for a guitarist, the trio settled on 16-year-old hotshot Geoff Siegel, or ‘Rexx’, as he preferred to be known. Candy played their first show in October 1981 at a small bar in the San Fernando Valley on the same night The Rolling Stones played the LA Coliseum.
“We had two people in the crowd, the bartender and the waitress, yet somehow we got an encore,” recalls Kyle. “We played that show with Red Zone, who morphed into Animotion, who had a No.1 hit with Obsession. We always seemed to be standing next to success, even though it mostly eluded us!”
The following year, however, the legendary Kim Fowley took Candy under his wing, producing demos and giving them a musical education. By the time Fowley began producing them, Candy had parted company with Rexx and recruited Cleveland-born Gilby Clarke, who beat out future Poison guitarist C.C. DeVille for the job.
“C.C. DeVille had blond hair [the band’s ad had specifically stated a requirement for black hair],” laughs Daniel. “He still complains about me picking Gilby over him to this day!”
Gilby’s recruitment was the final piece of the Candy jigsaw, as the group began setting the Hollywood scene alight, with Kim Fowley proclaiming the band to be “the male GoGos meets The Bay City Rollers”, and Kyle Vincent as “the still undiscovered Barry Manilow”. Yet Fowley never became the group’s manager – that role would be filled by Howard Marks. Nearly 30 years on, the group’s members feel that Marks was the wrong choice, but he had been the first big-time manager to approach them, and he got them a deal with PolyGram while negotiating on Kiss’s behalf.
The group next found themselves in Miami, recording at the famed Criteria Studios with producer Jimmy Ienner, who roped in Raspberries guitarist Wally Bryson to help out. While Raspberries fans Kyle Vincent and John Schubert were enthusiastic about working with Ienner and Bryson, Gilby Clarke was not.
“I hated the idea,” he reveals. “Jimmy didn’t want to do the day-to-day rehearsal stuff, so he hired Wally to babysit us. We wanted to sound like Generation X or The Ramones – real raw punk attitude with good hooks – but Jimmy thought that was a bad idea. But I loved Miami… wild Colombian girls!”
The album was completed in February 1985, but wouldn’t hit the shelves for another eight months, hurting the band’s momentum. Things had begun changing in Los Angeles during that period of inactivity, while the band toured with Rick Springfield and Corey Hart.
“It’s kind of funny,” recalls John Schubert. “We left a ‘pop’ city and came back to a motorcycle-riding tattooed community.”
The touring had been good but, sadly, PolyGram’s promotional efforts had not. Album sales suffered, and Kyle quit the group. “It had run its course,” he says. “The rest of the guys wanted to rock more, especially with Guns N’ Roses taking over Hollywood. I wanted to play pop music. The idea all along for me was to graduate into a solo career, which I have done. I left Candy and locked myself away for a couple years writing and recording.”
With Gilby now fronting the group and additional guitarist Ryan Roxie joining, Candy carried on. “We became more rock’n’roll and had way more fun, even though the spectre of a fading label deal hung over us,” remembers Schubert.
“It was fun to be in that line-up, but we weren’t good,” reckons Daniel. “All three of those guys are amazing to be in a band with, but Candy just wasn’t Candy without Kyle.”
Gilby echoes those sentiments. “We became just like the other LA bands at the time – loud and proud – but what made Candy special was Kyle, John, Jonathan and myself. We were different, and we should’ve accepted that.”
“Candy lasted about a year and a half before we decided to hang it up,” adds Schubert. “Kyle came back for the final show and we did The Last Radio Show together. By 1987 the whole LA scene had exploded, but Candy just didn’t seem to fit in.”
Electric Angels and Kill For Thrills debuted together at the same club on New Year’s Eve 1987. It was the beginning of an exciting new chapter for all concerned, but all these years later, the four band members of Candy are equally as excited that Whatever Happened To Fun… is getting a chance to be heard by far wider audience than they had enjoyed on their first ride on the rock’n’roll carousel.
“We had a fun run,” observes Vincent. “We were young and dumb at times, but when we were on, we were a pretty good little pop band that made the young girls cry. And that’s what music is all about.”
Originally published in Classic Rock Presents AOR issue 6
