ROCK BAND OF DESTINY ..... KERILYNN ENGEL
The quiet town of Fremont seems an unlikely place for the birth of a cult-favorite 1960s rock band, but the explanation for The Shaggs is clear – it was all foretold in prophecy.
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hen Fremont native and millworker Austin Wiggin was young, his mother read his palm and made three predictions: he would marry a strawberry-blonde woman, he would have two sons after his mother’s passing, and his daughters would form a famous band. After the first two prophecies came to pass, Austin saw it as his sacred duty to fulfill the third. In 1968, Austin withdrew daughters Helen, Dorothy (Dot), and Betty from the local high school, cloistering them at home to practice music all day. Not one of the girls had picked up an instrument before, so Dot and Betty struggled to learn guitar chords while Helen created her own beats on the drums. Austin dreamed of his girls becoming the female version of the Beatles and dubbed them “The Shaggs” for their rock ‘n’ roll inspired hair. Austin soon secured a gig for The Shaggs to play every Saturday night at the Fremont Town Hall. There was no dancing, president of the Fremont New Hampshire Historical Society Matthew Thomas remembers, “just a bunch of kids sitting around listening to them play and talking amongst themselves. It was a nice way to get out of the house on a Saturday night.” Some of them jeered the cacophonous music, he recalls, but the girls did their best to fulfill their father’s wishes. The band released their only studio album, Philosophy of the World, in 1969, but it attracted little notice. Austin’s prophetic dreams were dashed, the prophecy unfulfilled. 38 Rediscover New Hampshire June 2014
After he passed away in 1975, the girls stopped playing and gave away most of their equipment. But destiny would not be thwarted. In 1980, a Kentucky rock band called NRBQ happened across a copy of Philosophy of the World and fell in love with the quaint innocence and novelty of the girls’ music. They were granted permission to re-release a selection of The Shaggs’ songs that same year, calling the album The Shaggs’ Own Thing. The new album was reviewed in Rolling Stone and suddenly the obscure Fremont band was launched into national view. Rolling Stone called the album “priceless and timeless.” Music critic Cub Koda called it “charming and unsettling.” Frank Zappa is said to have professed they were, “better than the Beatles.” Joe Mozian, vice-president of marketing at RCA Victor, summed it up as best he could: “It is kind of a bad record; that’s so obvious, it’s a given. But it absolutely intrigued me … I couldn’t
comprehend that music like that existed.” As for local historian Matthew Thomas, when asked if he liked The Shaggs’ music, he hesitated. “Personally... no.” And for the casual listener, it’s hard not to agree. Though the girls’ clear voices carry the melody, they’re overwhelmed by guitars twanging out of tune. Adding the drums seems only to make it worse; each instrument marches to an internal rhythm, often changing speed in a futile attempt to find its sisters’ places in the song. Against all odds, The Shaggs have a modern cult following around the world. Their music is popular with connoisseurs of outsider art who appreciate the band’s haunting eccentricity, their music untouched by the commercial world of agents and record companies. With The Shaggs’ records selling for hundreds of dollars today, the prophecy of Austin’s mother turned out to be right after all.
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