RIDE, RIDE, BABY (Part One)
FIRST MOTORCYCLE ROUTE:
from Asbury Park to Memphis
I met my father and mother during The Archies’ farewell world tour in 2032. They were both on stage! My name is Dean Christopher, and I’m the son of Archie Andrews and Betty Cooper. Archie didn’t know about me for many years. It’s a long story: I grew up with an adopted family, but as an adult, I found my biological parents. I became close to both of them while they were still alive. Betty died in 2068; Archie passed away just last year, in 2073. Archie’s daughter Maya and I were his heirs. After we settled Archie’s estate, I became more interested in his musical legacy. He had answered lots of my questions about his career, but there were things I could only learn from the Archie Archives. Now here I am, browsing them! They’re housed at Riverdale Music Academy, the school he founded in 2017. Recently, I’ve been spending a lot of time here, and I’ve found dozens of news clippings, photos, musical arrangements and mementos. Maya and I intend to put some of them in an Archie retrospective we plan to curate. However, one of my most recent finds probably won’t be included: An unfinished memoir by Veronica Lodge, Maya’s mother and Archie’s wife (he and Betty never married). The most interesting part goes into detail about an Archies album that he never talked about. I did ask him about it, more than once, in fact; but he always changed the subject! After reading this manuscript, I think I understand why.
POP CULTURE CANTINA
presents
RIDE, RIDE, BABY!
THE ARCHIES IN SOUL MOTION
A Novelette in Four Parts
Inspired by the Songs of
BERT BERNS
starring
THE ARCHIES
BLUE-EYED SOUL
MARIACHI LOWRIDER
OLGUITA and REGINALD
TONI TOPAZ
THE VIXENS
Cartoon Cameo Appearances by
GLORIA ESTEFAN
MIDLAND
DARA SEDAKA
and
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
featuring LAURA PINTO and
introducing DR. LESTER E. BLUE, JR
Narrated by
DEAN CHRISTOPHER
FROM VERONICA’S MANUSCRIPT:
When The Archies got out of their recording contract with Don Kirshner in 1992, Atlantic Records came after us. No, I'm not kidding! The label that introduced great artists like Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, The Drifters, Led Zeppelin and Ray Charles wanted The Archies on its roster. My father, Ram Lodge, was friendly with Ahmet Ertegun who was the founder of the label. Ahmet reached out to Archie and me through Daddy.
We were typecast as a Bubblegum Rock act at that time, but he saw the potential in us to become much more. Archiekins was overjoyed and eager to sign with Atlantic; he revered their catalog because he was a big Soul music fanatic. Not me! I was adamant that the next time we cut masters, it would be for our own label. When that would be was anybody's guess, though, because Reginald desperately wanted a solo career and Jughead and Betty wanted to expand their diner, The Chok’lit Shoppe into a restaurant chain. The group was splintering and we didn’t want to recruit new members, so we turned Ahmet Ertegun down.
THE ARCHIES SIGN A RECORDING CONTRACT
WITH ATLANTIC RECORDS
It was the right decision to make at the time, and it worked out well: The Archies regrouped in 2001, signed to Archie Records, the indie label I started with Archie and Alan Mayberry, and they became more successful than ever before. But then, in 2014 we decided to sell the label to Jason Blossom. Oh, what a mistake that was! We considered him a friend but that bald-headed bastard cheated us royally. He also bootlegged our album catalog even while he sued to stop us from recording for any other label. For twelve agonizing years, we were off the charts!
We counter-sued Jason and finally won back the right to record in 2027. Unfortunately, we still didn’t know who had control of the Archie masters. That dispute wouldn’t be decided until the following year but for the time being, it was great to have our freedom back! Because our lawsuit was ongoing and our opponent was a billionaire, we didn't dare use available funds to launch another indie label; it was a given that The Archies would sign with a major record company.
Would you believe Atlantic Records still wanted us? By then, we were all pushing sixty but they wanted us even more; that's because of all the new hits we'd racked up. When Atlantic’s new CEO, Dr. Lester Blue, Jr. came calling, we said "yes"! No way were we going to turn them down a second time; but Lord help us. If we had only known what kind of wild roller coaster we were getting ready to ride!
CONCERT FLYER FOR THE ARCHIES' 2027
APPEARANCE AT THE STONE PONY
Getting our group back together was tricky. We knew Jughead would drop whatever he was doing and rejoin us if we asked him to; that’s the kind of loyal he is. So Juggy came back, and surprisingly, so did Betty Cooper. In fact, she sought us out instead of the other way around. Betty and Juggy were divorced by then, so we didn't think she'd want to come back to the band. There was no guarantee that Trevor Smith would return, either.
Trevor had recently suffered a tragic loss: His sister Valerie, who perished in the plane crash that also killed her band, Josie + The Pussy Cats. The Archies knew them professionally, and we were deeply saddened; but to Trevor, The Pussy Cats were like family and he took Josie and Melody's deaths almost as hard as Valerie's. He coped by increasing his workload. Trev reclaimed his true surname, Santiago, and went back to being a top studio musician. We understood when he opted not to rejoin. Still, I think he might have if the chance to go out on tour with Taylor Swift hadn't come his way; naturally, he decided to do that instead.
Reginald Mantle III was always out of the question; in 2021, his wife Olguita retired from their duet act and he’d launched a successful solo career. Now known as Gino el Huapanguero, Reginald was one of Norteño music’s top attractions. His membership in The Archies was strictly past tense; but we couldn’t function as a quartet! We were accustomed to having six members, and Atlantic signed us with the understanding that we’d have no fewer than that.
What's more, the voice problems that Archiekins started having in the late Teens had worsened! We needed a second lead tenor in the band to take some of the pressure off him. We decided to tap two of our honorary members, Chuck Clayton and Kevin Keller. It was a logical thing to do: Both of them had worked with us off and on since we were in college, occasionally in concert and often in the studio.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN'S PRIVATE
PRESSING OF A LIVE ALBUM BY
THE ARCHIES
Kelly, of course, had become a big Heavy Metal star. As his first record producer, I had something to do with that! In the Teens and early Twenties, he was playing huge arenas; but in 2025, he shocked the music industry by stepping away from Metal to pursue his real love: Singing Bebop, that classic Fifties style popularized by Ella Fitzgerald. Predictably, his Rock fans abandoned him and the Jazz world didn’t exactly extend open arms! Kelly and I had been close friends since high school, but we’d fallen out of touch in recent years. When I tracked him down in Chicago, he was “between gigs” and struggling.
The Archies had offered him full membership several times, but he always turned us down; this time was no different. However, after some heavy duty cajoling from me, he agreed to join us on a “temp” basis. He insisted it was just going to be until he earned enough money to fund a new Jazz project; but having finally bagged Kelly, I had no intention of letting him go! His Freddie Mercury singing style was just what we needed.
We didn’t have to track Chuck Clayton down because I knew where he was: At Dollywood in Tennessee, working for my godmother, Dolly Parton! Chuckii was president of our publishing company until we sold it, and then at my urging, Dolly hired him as her theme park’s music director. Mama Titties (my pet name for her) had come to depend on Chuckii and didn’t want to let him go; but when l told her how bad we needed him, she changed her mind and gave us her blessings. The man himself was a harder sell: Joining The Archies full-time had to come with some perks! Chuckii had been our touring music director back in the days of “Sugar, Sugar” and he wanted to assume that role again. We said “sure, no problem!” But then he demanded more: He wanted to go in the studio and produce The Archies, too!
Few people would have dared bargain with us like that, and really, we wouldn’t have accepted those terms from anybody else; but we knew he was up to the task. Chuckii, God rest his soul, was an exceptional musician! At one time, he’d subbed on stage for every Archies member; it seemed like there was no instrument he couldn’t play. Chuckii was there during the early years of Archie Records, arranging vocals and conducting sessions. Later, he’d written hit songs for our publishing company and supervised countless song demos, both his and those of other writers. He worked well with us and with our business partner, sound engineer Alan Mayberry. In fact, he and Alan M had produced together before. When he expressed the desire to supervise our sessions, I actually wondered why we had never asked him to do it in the past. Long story short, Chuckii got what he wanted from us, and we got The Archies back at full strength!
We didn’t have new product out, but we didn’t need any to draw crowds. Just news that The Archies were performing again was enough to book dates! But we wanted to prove that our value as a live act hadn’t diminished, so Archie scheduled a one-night-only appearance at The Stone Pony in Asbury Park. That’s the New Jersey Rock club Bruce Springsteen made famous; thirty years earlier, we'd headlined a benefit concert there. When Bruce heard about the booking, he contacted us with a request: That we do a live performance of his favorite Archies album, JEFF + ELLIE SONG BOOK. Not only did Bruce love the classic songs of Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, he also was a big fan of Phil Spector. That album contains covers of several hit songs that Spector originally produced.
THE ARCHIES IN EL PASO, TX RECORDING
A NEW STUDIO ALBUM FOR ATLANTIC
RECORDS
Well, we were hardly going to turn The Boss down! Besides, it was an excellent idea; performing a hit album in its entirety would make the date even more special. All the same, JEFF + ELLIE SONG BOOK is a double-length album with over two dozen songs on it! We didn’t want our reunion show to be a marathon, but we promised Bruce we’d fit in as many album tracks as we could. Somebody leaked our conversation to the music press (guess who?) and the combination of comeback concert and Springsteen song requests resulted in an SRO date: Tickets sold out less than two hours after going on sale!
On April 5th, the night of our concert, the line of fans waiting to get into The Stone Pony stretched down the boardwalk. Everybody was expecting Bruce to be there to see us perform and sure enough, he was! The Boss introduced us, raving about the album we were about to perform, and then he enjoyed our live sets from backstage. By the following week, original copies of JEFF + ELLIE SONG BOOK were selling for upwards of $1,000 each on auction websites! Bruce’s endorsement was worth more than any amount of advertising. If only The Archies could’ve reaped that windfall; but by then Jason Blossom was the only person getting rich off our catalog. We were paying attorneys through the nose to rectify that situation!
But I digress. As I said before, Archie’s voice wasn’t as strong as it used to be and he didn’t want to overtax it. Performing an album of mostly Girl Group material gave him an excuse to leave most of the lead singing to Betty and me. We opened the show with "River-Deep, Mountain-High", a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. My big solo spot was “I'll Never Need More Than This.” Betty wowed them with “Hold On, Baby” and then she and I teamed up with Jughead for a trio version of “Hanky Panky.” Juggy sang solo on “I Want You For My Sweetheart” and performed “I Got A Dream” as a funky duet with Kevin Keller. Kelly took over on “Be My Baby” and “I Can Hear Music”, both numbers Reginald had recorded. The audience just went crazy for him! Chuckii went over big, too, singing “That's All I Ever Want From You, Baby” with that great Gospel sound he had; but I must say, now that he was our producer, all of us were sounding a bit more “churchy”. Archiekins finally took a lead vocal on "Leader Of The Pack" and tore the roof off the sucker! I mean to tell you!
Alan Mayberry recorded our Stone Pony show for possible release, but Atlantic Records left it on the shelf. A vinyl pressing does exist, though – Bruce loved our renditions of Phil Spector’s hits so much, he arranged to have one made for his personal collection. That’s gotta be the rarest Archies record in the world! We tried and failed to coax him onstage to play with us – he humbled us by saying he was strictly in fan mode that night - but The Boss promised a collaboration that was even more exciting: An ARCHIES SING SPRINGSTEEN album that he’d supervise! Unfortunately, it never happened because of complications that I’ll explain later on; but we would meet up in the studio with Bruce very soon. In the meantime, we had an album of Soul music to record!
MUSIC MOGUL DON KIRSHNER
WITH THE ARCHIES AND CHUCK
CLAYTON, CIRCA 1989
Archiekins had always wanted us to be a Soul group, but we just weren’t. We were about as diverse in our musical interests as bands get: Country, Jazz, Latin, Pop ballads. I always had to keep him from steering us too hard in an R + B direction; but now The Archies were signed to Atlantic Records, a label famous for its Soul catalog. It was now or never if he was going to realize his dream! Archie had it written into our contact that we would record at least two classic Soul albums, and the first one would be a collection of songs by Bert Berns. Bruce Springsteen had suggested the theme. Berns was another one of his favorite songwriters: A phenomenal Sixties talent who died young, but not before writing (and often producing) iconic records for The Drifters, The McCoys, Ben E. King, Lulu, Van Morrison and many other stars.
A month later, we flew down to El Paso, Texas with our manager, Nicholas Freund. Our destination was Falcon Studios, where we planned to cut our Bert Berns tribute. Recording the album remotely from home studios was never an option for The Archies: We hated working that way! There was no musical synergy if we weren't playing together, and I insisted on professional recording facilities. Archie Sound Studios (ASS) had closed in the early Twenties, and Falcon was a logical alternative; at one time, Archie and I had owned it. In 2003, we sold the studio to Dilton Doiley Briseño to use for his music projects. He renamed Falcon "Studio B", but when we launched Discos Falcón as an Archie subsidiary label ten years later, Dilton agreed to run it for us. It made sense to revive the original name, so he did. When he heard we were going to cut new tracks, Dilton offered us gratis use of Falcon Studios. We accepted his offer because we needed to economize: Every spare cent was being funneled into our ongoing lawsuit against Jason Blossom!
But there were strings attached: In exchange for letting us use the facility free of charge, he wanted to be music director for the album sessions. Archie accepted this deal over my objections: Everything Dilton did sounded like Tejano music to me! He would never have been my choice to work on a Soul record, but I didn’t press the issue. Archiekins trusted his musicianship; if it turned out that Dilton couldn’t deliver the goods, my husband would have nobody to blame but himself!
GUEST MUSICIANS WHO PLAY AND SING
WITH THE ARCHIES AT THEIR ATLANTIC
RECORDING SESSIONS
We were in the habit of making album demos before we cut album masters but this time, Archie ruled out that method; he wanted us be totally spontaneous in our approach to Bert Berns' music. That made me nervous, especially when I saw our studio brass section: Mariachi Lowrider, a band that that Dilton frequently used on record dates. They'd been sidemen at a few Archies concerts, too; known to prefer leather and vinyl outfits to traditional mariachi suits, they were cutting-edge musicians in every way. Their leader, Foolkiller (a sweetheart of a Jewish boy whose real name was Harvey Schwartz) was going to help write the rhythm arrangements. The Lowrider boys had impeccable Latin chops, but could they play Soul music convincingly? Dilton told us not to worry, which only made me worry more; and just as I’d feared, the tracks they cut sounded more like México City than Memphis to me!
But there was justification for that: Bert Berns had a strong Latin thread running through his music, as well as a Pop thread that we could tap into. For the Soul element, we depended on Archie’s musical instincts, and on Chuck Clayton. He was our ace in the hole! I knew his Gospel-flavored vocal arrangements would be fabulous; but to guard against further Tejano influence, I convinced Archie to move the vocal tracking sessions from Texas to Tennessee.
The group spent four days at Sun Studios, where Elvis Presley got his start in 1953. We had recorded our first comeback album there, and over the years it had become a good luck charm for us. By no means was booking Sun cheap, but it was worth raiding my savings account for: When The Archies sang Bert Berns hits in that hallowed ambiance, to my ears they sounded better than they ever had before!
Chuck Clayton deserves most of the credit. Chuckii was raised Catholic like Archie and me, but as a child he liked to visit the Protestant churches his friends attended. By his teens, he was obsessed with Gospel music, so much so that he learned how to sing it the logical way: By joining up a Baptist congregation! His parents weren’t happy, but they had to accept it: Their headstrong son couldn’t be swayed once he’d set his mind on a goal! For a while, he even went on tour as a teenage Gospel singer. Even though he returned to Catholicism as an adult, Chuckii never regretted the time he spent on the Gospel music scene. “Gospel is the root of today’s popular music”, he always said, “so if you can sing ‘church’, you can sing anything!”
His next obsession was Country music, and for several years Chuckii’s Sunday-morning vocal style made him a favorite in honky tonk bars; but Nashville’s Music Row just didn’t welcome Black Country singers back then! He ended up working for Archie and me as a songwriter, promotion man, demo producer and ultimately, president of our music publishing firm. Chuckii also helped me design the label for Archie Records; his creative talent was wide-ranging!
Now he was producing The Archies, something he probably should’ve been doing all along. Chuckii always pushed us hard to find the soulful edge in our singing voices. Kevin and Jughead didn’t have to look far for theirs; not for nothing had they once sung together under the name Blue-Eyed Soul! They sounded so authentic, back in 2012 they were tapped to portray The Righteous Brothers in a jukebox musical. As soon as I heard Juggy bear down on “Aretha” and then heard Kelly tear the top off “Are You Lonely For Me, Baby?” I knew we had a pair of chart-toppers on our hands! Betty was marvelous, too; her rendition of “Take Another Little Piece Of My Heart” certainly gave Janis Joplin’s version a run for the money. Our manager Big Nipsy said it sent chills down his spine!
THE VIXENS WILL SING BACKGROUND VOCALS
FOR THE ARCHIES ON THEIR ATLANTIC
RECORDS STUDIO ALBUM
But those vocal dates at Sun didn’t go smoothly at first. A lot can change in twelve years, and the biggest change in The Archies was that Juggy and Betty had gotten a divorce. Archie and I could see it coming back in 2014, but we hoped they would be able to patch it up. Now that both of them are happily remarried, it’s clear that splitting up was their best move; but I didn’t anticipate there’d be problems when the group got together again. Juggy and Betty’s split wasn’t acrimonious; they were still on good terms, and since their divorce they’d seen each other at the homes of their grown children. They just hadn’t tried to work together! In that context, they were visibly uncomfortable; you felt the strain when they had to interact as band members.
The two of them had always sounded great performing duets, though; so Chuck Clayton chose a Bert Berns heartbreak ballad they could sing together: “Cry, Baby.” It was another tune that Janis Joplin had popularized, and we knew Betty had the chops to meet that high standard. With Juggy on the track, too, there should've been fireworks; instead, the fuse sputtered out. What a disaster! Wrong pitch, poor timing, fumbled lyrics. They did take after take but each one was worse than before. Finally, Betty threw up her hands. “The magic is gone,” she declared, shaking her head. Poor Juggy was so embarrassed: He had always been such a pro in the studio. We seriously considered scrapping the duet, and I have to confess that I was angry: Their personal difficulties were costing us time and money!
Something had to be done, but fortunately, Kevin Keller knew what that something was. He asked both Betty and Juggy to accompany him to dinner at Felicia Suzanne’s that evening; it’s one of the finest restaurants in Memphis. They tried to beg off, but he insisted; that’s when I knew he had more in mind than just a social outing.
Kelly filled me in on what happened later. Over steaming plates of babyback ribs, he mostly talked and they listened. In that charming quasi-Midwestern drawl of his, he took them back to when they were all teenagers at Riverdale High. He’d arrived in Riverdale during junior year; his dad was in the military and his family moved frequently. It would have been hard for any teenage boy, adjusting over and over again to new surroundings and people; but it was especially hard for him.
ALAN M PHOTOGRAPHS THE ARCHIES WITH
TREVOR SANTIAGO, CRISTINA ANGEL AND
OLGUITA AND REGINALD AT THEIR
NEW YORK CITY RECORDING
SESSION
Kelly was an openly Gay student, and the Eighties was very a different time: AIDS was ravaging Gay men, and many religious leaders called it “God’s punishment for sin”! This ignorant rhetoric stoked hostility against LGBT people across society; they had to suffer public condemnation at best and at worst, physical violence! Revealing one’s sex and/or gender diversity was risky back then. Bullies had tormented Kelly at high schools all over North America, and unfortunately, Riverdale High was no exception.
The bullying had made Kevin shy, withdrawn and suspicious of other kids. He grew up to be quite the hunk, but back in the Eighties he was kind of scrawny and some people thought he was effeminate, too. That made him fair game! Big Moose came to his rescue a few times when knuckleheads had him cornered. Moosie tried to befriend him, but Kelly was intimidated by his size and fierce reputation; he didn’t feel safe opening up to this brawny, macho guy. The only classmate who could penetrate his hard shell was Jughead. They hit it off, and then Juggy introduced him to Archie and Betty. Those three became his safe circle of friends.
Reginald and I befriended Kevin later on, and he got to be my very best friend next to Betty; but not even I was closer to him than Jughead was. Juggy got him into bodybuilding and then kindled his interest in music. They took band class together. Kelly turned out to be a natural on keyboards, but baby boy had a great pair of pipes on him, too! At the suggestion of our music teacher, Ms. Grundy, Juggy and Kelly started singing together. They competed as a duo in the senior talent show and won. It was around that time that Kevin came to me with what he called “his deepest, darkest secret.” He had fallen in love with Jughead!
MEET ME TONIGHT, BABE
DOWN ON THE STREET
WEAR YOUR HAIR DOWN, GIRL
AND BOOTS ON YOUR FEET
GET ON IT, BABY
GET ON MY BIKE
SIT ON IT, BABY
YOU KNOW WHAT I LIKE
Music + Lyrics by
JEFF BARRY + BERT BERNS
©Copyright 1966 Sloopy II Music/
Sony ATV Music/Trio Music/
Universal Songs of Polygram International
(BMI)
