Soma Records overruled the band. It might be one of the few instances in The Gestures’ brief run where their record label made the right call. “We wanted that as the A-side when we took it to them,” Klugherz says, “but someone said, no, it’s ‘Run, Run, Run.’” Menten adds: “’It Seems to Me’ — now there’s another depressing song. ‘The world is bad, this is sad, it seems to me.’ Again, I know why Gus liked it.’ The same week “Run, Run, Run”/”It Seems to Me” arrives in record stores, a little ditty by The Beatles, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” is also released. “Basically, it was bad timing,” Menten says, “and we probably suffered the most. Unlike some other bands, we never got a national run without competition from The Beatles.”
Supply & demand
Still, the Mankato area had its first bona fide rock stars. Summer 1964 into ‘65 were halcyon days for Dale, Zeeth, Gus and Bruce. “Run, Run, Run” was an instant regional and local turntable hit. The Gestures were officially big time. Riding high, Klugherz bought his first Corvette. Kids turned their heads when Zeeth cruised by. “Did I buy the Corvette with a royalty check? What royalties?” Klugherz says, laughing. “I just charged it to the record label.” “We looked up to them as local people who had made it,” Billy Steiner says. “It was just a gas when you could go see them. They were a really good live band and one of the best harmony bands around. I used to ask ‘Mr. Waterston’ if I could carry his drum kit. I just idolized him.” After Waterston, a Vietnam veteran, died in 1996, Steiner bought Mr. Waterston’s drum kit and gifted it to his son, Dylan. “We really thought they were big stars back then,” Greg Duffy says, “We’d see Bruce and Zeeth driving around town in a Corvette. They just looked so cool.” The record climbed to No. 1 in the Twin Cities and New York and No. 3 in Los Angeles. The quartet crammed into a van and toured North America. “The ones in Canada were great,” Menten says. “There were some shows booked with a lot of logic and reason. And then there were some, it was like they were booked by a kindergarten class.” One night, the band played Oklahoma City, then was slated to appear in Oregon a couple of days later. “Actually, it was in Washington, but we went to the wrong state,” Menten says. “That’s another story. Geez, that was stupid.” The band quickly realized they had a serious problem on its hands. Supply of the single was low and it became clear Soma Records was incapable of keeping up with demand. “We would play somewhere and kids would be really upset they couldn’t find our record,” Menten says. “That’s where it fell apart. It had something to do with the Rocky Mountains; Soma couldn’t ship the record over the mountains. “ The standard industry “payola” practice was also out of the question. “We certainly couldn’t pay anybody to play our record,” Menten says, “because nobody paid us.” Yet, “Run, Run, Run” managed to sell 248,000 copies. Well, at least that many. “We don’t really know what it really sold,” Menten says, “with the funny accounting of Soma Records.” Major labels like RCA and Decca, which had greater distribution resources, tried to sign The Gestures, but Soma 16 • June 2014 • MANKATO MAGAZINE
refused to release them from their contract. “It was just amazing when the record stations wouldn’t play our record because we wouldn’t pay them under the table,” Klugherz says. “But what are you going to do? I was oblivious to all that at the time. It wasn’t until later ...” It’s a familiar story, one as old as the record business itself. Some people made a lot of money from “Run, Run, Run.” But it wasn’t the musicians who did the heavy lifting. “A band getting screwed over by their record label?” says Steiner, rolling his eyes in sarcasm. “I’ve never heard that one before.” The Gestures released just one more single, “Don’t Mess Around”/”Candlelight” — though, a full-length CD packed with unreleased recordings from that era was finally released in 1996. In a cruel twist of fate, Menten and Klugherz received their copies of the CD the day of Waterston’s funeral. Menten left The Gestures in 1966. He preferred the warm confines of a recording studio to a concert stage and had seen the sharks circling. “At that point I was living in Bloomington,” he says, “and I got a lot of the inside business stuff and I’d walk away from what I was hearing and think, ‘Oh, God, get me out of here.’ And I was falling in love with recording and liked the fact you could do multiple takes (of a song). You couldn’t do that on stage.” Greg Duffy remembers the day when his brother, Dan, was asked to replace Menten. “I came home from school and saw Zeeth’s Corvette in the driveway,” he says. “Boy, that was big. My brother was going to be in The Gestures.” Dan Duffy’s stint in The Gestures was short-lived, however. “I don’t know when exactly we stopped,” Klugherz says. “I think it was in ‘67 — I know we didn’t get into 1968. I wouldn’t say we fell apart or anything. It was just over.”
Lasting Legacy
By the 1970s, The Gestures were defunct, but their impact rippled throughout the Mankato music scene. “Everybody wanted to be in a band then,” says Steiner, whose own group, City Mouse, was formed in 1971. “We already had some good rock ‘n’ roll bands, but there’s no question that after The Gestures, everybody that played music or was going to play music saw that now we know we can do it. They gave us a reason.” After The Gestures disbanded, Gus Dewey was an on-andoff member of City Mouse. He died in 2004, a local legend in his own time. Aside from The Gestures, his lasting musical legacy is his saddest of sad songs, the gut-wrenching ballad, “Let Me Down Easy.” Roy Orbison would’ve approved.