Sunday, September 16, 2007

Mac67 Music Era

It might have been a cliché in the 1960s for a lot of teenaged boys. Like the old Byrds song, So You Wanne Be a Rock and Roll Star,” the object was to learn to play. Then meet girls, says MacArthur 1967 grad Cleve Wilson.

Wilson says that was the reason he and some friends put together a garage band, The Neighbors. They played the hits on Top 40 radio, along with Beatles and Rolling Stones selections., Rehearsals were in his parents’ garage on Eastley Street, Wilson said, and neighbors complained constantly over the racket of electric guitars and drums. So the Neighbors name stuck.

Wilson, who now teaches history at South Side, was a shy lad at MacArthur. He was dyslexic, and had problems with school work and maintaining his gtrades. But he could play drums, like his hero Stones drummer Charlie Watts, and he could keep a beat. That was all he needed. “Vocals? No way,” he laughs. It was Watts’ style to take care of business for the Stones “and not draw any attention to himself,” Wilson said. Otherwise, it was the Stones brashness, and rebelliousness, that drew Wilson to become a fan.

With Nelson Jones on bass, Lee Joy on rhythm guitar and vocals and Bob Gibson on lead guitar, the Neighbors became a favorite band for parties, weddings and teen gatherings. Jones was the personality of the group, “good with the girls,” Wilson said. Joy, “one of the weirdest characters I ever met, was rhythm guitarist, a “North Side version of Jim Morrison.” (He died in the 1970s). Gibson was the lead guitarist, “the nerd of the group,”. Gibson was shy and smart. “He was a meticulous guitar player, the quality musician of the whole group.” The group recorded a single, “Somebody to Love,” that Wilson says didn’t sound at all like the Jefferson Airplane song. No copy of the song exists.

“We came into our own about the time we graduated,” he said. The band found gigs at proms at Lytle and Natalia, and in and around San Antonio, and even followed Wilson to Brenham where he attended Blinn Junior College on a track and field scholarship.It’s there when the band fell apart.

Wilson had met his wife, and had accepted a small track and field scholarship to Blinn. It gave him an avenue to go off to school that he wouldn’t have “with my grades.” He had something to sell during that senior year at MacArthur, he said. “It got me out of town, away from my parents – I needed to get away.” Wilson became a protégé of Brenham native and coach Ben Benoeke. It was a favor he’s never forgotten.

“I needed what he had to offer,” Wilson says. He calls it divine intervention. “Life has a purpose, you might not see it at the time,” he said. “Everything works out - if you try to do the best you can.”

These days, Wilson remembers taking a speech class at MacArthur that helped him overcome his shyness. “It was very instrumental – I could do something in that class,” he said. The class taught him how to get up in front of people, learn skits, get up on stage. Now, a history teacher in South San, “I can learn from what people taught me,” he said. “I can look back at myself in middle Wilson has foun d he can reacb ot and form relationships with his students.
“I introduced them to chess,” he said. “Now we have a Beat Mr. Wilson Club.”

By: John Edminston

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