The ‘Ides’ march into Sun City for a smash-hit performance

MMM: We’ll just say at the outset that the Moonlight Mojo Man is pleased to be at the studios with Jim Peterik & Larry Millas, members of the Ides of March, who is doing a program at Sun City on November 10, I believe. Get your tickets if you don’t have them already, but I wanted to talk with you a little bit today about a number of things. Some folks have a little background on you; the group started in the 60s, I know. Tell us a little bit about how the group started.

Jim: Well, it actually started with a knock on my door from Larry Millas. I was in another band called the Renegades, and he had seen me perform with this band at the 4th of July festivities at Morton West High School in the field, and I guess he saw something in me or whatever. And he knocked on my door and says, ‘You want to join my band?” And I says, ‘No. I got my own band,’ so he went away. About a week later, knock-knock-knock. ‘Hey, you want to join my band,’ and so anyway, at this point, I go, ‘God, just to get this guy to leave me alone.’ So I went to the rehearsal about a week later, and all of a sudden, I realize this is a better band than mine, and they were working out some Beatles songs, and they actually stayed on the harmony parts instead of switching. And I said, ‘Oh, I’m there man,’ you know. And that was the beginning of the Ides of March. It was myself, Larry Millas, and Bob Berkland, and we had a different drummer for about a minute, and when we got Mike, that became the nucleus of the band that is still together to this day.

MMM: And that was roughly when? About sixty, sixty something?

Larry: Well, about ‘64.

MMM: I know that at some point fairly early on the group added trumpets, and I’m intrigued by that because I was in a band back then, too, and I didn’t think about adding trumpets. That was unusual, I think, and maybe eventually became the Chicago sound, but how did it come to you?

Larry: Inspiration, I think, or so felt from this R&B soul music, you know, soul magnet and just stuff that we would hear.

MMM: So you added a couple of horns, trombone players?

Jim: Trumpets, and, um, like Larry said, it really was not the jazz rock that we were trying to emulate; it was the R&B. And everybody says, ‘Boy, you guys sounded a lot like Chicago.’ We were really a rock band with horns, as opposed to a Jazz band with horns.

MMM: Plus you were before Chicago, if I remember correctly.

Jim: Simultaneously, but you know, about the same thereabouts.

MMM: And, uh, you did that for a certain amount of time until lightening struck, I guess, huh? Tell us about that.

Larry: Yeah, you know we had been playing this song at all the various clubs where we were: Blue Village in Westmont, The Green Gorilla in Des Plaines, The Hutch, The Crimson Cougars, The Pink Fink in Chicago, Cellar in Arlington Heights, Valley View Young Adults Club in Valley View, and we were playing a song called “Vehicle” that I wrote for my then-girlfriend, trying to impress her and win her back, and the response was always tremendous to the song. The dance floor would fill up, and we were going to record the dance song, but at the time, it was not really a radio song, it was a dance song.

Jim: Well, little did we know, we went in the studio, cut four things for Warner Bros. for the demo, put the song “Vehicle” as the last song on the tape and didn’t think anything of it until we heard back from Warner Bros. They said that fourth song is a smash. We thought, ‘Really, I thought it was just a Valley View Young Adults Club song.’ No clue that this was going to change our lives.

MMM: And the others on the demo were of the same sort of genre, or…?

Jim: We had horns, which ended up with the first album.

MMM: Those were written? You wrote those as well?

Jim: Yeah, we wrote all of our material, except, like, we used to cover a couple of Beatles songs and totally change them. We used to cover “Eleanor Rigby.” We covered “Wooden Ships.” We always re-invented whatever we covered.

Larry: There’s a cover on this new CD.

MMM: Well, let’s talk a little bit about the upcoming show at Sun City. Tell us what we can expect to see on November 10?

Jim: A great show! We always strive for excellence, and usually we achieve it. Because everybody is in the right frame of mind. We’re out there to entertain, and one of the things that makes the Ides unique is that it’s pretty well ‘hit-hit-hit, hit after hit.’ And that’s because not only do we do the Ides of March hits, but we do the songs that I was lucky enough to co-write with other bands, like the 38 Special catalog, caught up and rocking into the 90’s. We bring aboard some Survivor hits, ‘The Search is Over,’ ‘Eye of the Tiger.’ The thing about the Ides is, we add our own sound to all those songs. Once you’ve heard it, the ‘Eye of the Tiger’ with the brass, you never want to hear it any other way.

MMM: (laughter)

Jim: Very exciting. We’re very active onstage, so I wanted to prepare everybody for that. We don’t sit there; we don’t stand there; we move around. I have a wireless mic. I go out in the audience. To me, one of the greatest moments in my career is in the audience watching Bruce Springsteen perform. This was in ’74, before he even made it. And he kept up with that audience, and with this guitar cord that had to be 100 feet long—long before wireless—and I’m looking at him, and said ‘That’s what I want to be.’ I would say the greatest special effect is human connection. You can have flash pots, smoke bombs, but person-to-person, that’s the goose bump. That’s what we try to bring to the show.

MMM: Well, great. Well we sure look forward to it. Thank you so much for taking your time to spend with us this afternoon, and we’re going to be there. We will be watching.

Jim/Larry: We’re looking forward to it.

The Ides of March Q&A will be continued in the November 4 edition of the Sun Day.

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