News-Press from Fort Myers, Florida • Page 49

NEWS-PRESS DATEBOOK 2 JUMBLE 2 ji MOVIES. 10 TV LISTINGS .12 tjja THURSDA Y.JANUARY 5, 1984 TOIL sr YJS BOB I MORRIS What does Eric Easton of Naples have to do with the second most famous rock band of all time? Plenty back in the beginning in 1963 SfliDinKBS mMm By MCHAEL DUNN i. ft PreM Bureau NAFLES They were poor, scruffy mu- siclanaearnins lust enoush monev for no- rmtr, a I 1 1 tatoes, tggs and tea the night Eric Easton squeezed his way into the hot, crowded Station Hotel to see the band called the Rolling tones. 1 It waisunday, April 28, 1963. Easton, then 35, toned a talent agency In London, England.

Something special was happening to thelocal music scene. A band from Liverpool Was beginning to attract a lot of regional attention, and music-business insiders wert predicting that the band -a Mm tuasssif called the Beatles was going to be very Dig. But the Beetles were taken. A young man named BrianEpsteln had discovered them in a makeshift club called The Cavern and had signed thim to a contract Still, something magical ias happening in music, and 1 lit fcaston sensed a musical revolution com ing. r4 4 ill Easton, top; the Stones, above, a few days after Easton signed the group in 1963 He elbowed his way through a crowd of teen-agers to the front of the stage at the Station Hotel.

Swtet dripped down his collar from the denie heat The music was deafening. Easton yeUed to Brian Jones, one of the band's guitar players, if he and the group could meet to talk about the group's future. The two exchanged telephone numbers between songs, -v Easton didn't know It when he left the hotel that night but he would become manager of one of the most famous bands of all time second only to The Beatles in fame and legendary status. Today Easton, 56, is a resident of Naples. He owns a piano-and-organ dealership and a real estate business to keep him comfortably busy.

Like most people, it was the sunshine and beaches that prompted Easton and his wife, Mary, to leave the smog and fog of London for Florida. Easton is a charming, friendly, unassuming man not the type to gloat over his fortunes. He humbly says, in his lilting British accent that he just happened to be in the right place at the right time. He was manager of the Rolling Stones for three years, until he decided he'd had enough of the wild, hectic, full-tilt world of rock music. Besides the Stones, Easton discovered and managed the Dave Clark Five for a short while.

Easton is a storehouse of anecdotes and thoughtful memories, and when he looks back. It seems everything fell into place. "A lot of people were talking about them (Rolling Stones). A friend of mine, a BBC radio producer, mentioned them to me, and I said I was going to go up Sunday to see them," Easton said. "He said he wanted to get them into the studio to see if we could do anything with them.

They made an audition tape for the BBC, but they failed their audition. Peter Grant of the BBC, said you'll never be able to do anything with this group with Mick Jagger as the singer. That's always attributed to me in books, but it's not true. Of course, we can all laugh at that now." The Station Hotel was in Richmond, England. Easton decided he'd better get there quickly and see the Stones before another agent got to them.

Strawberries may be price of world order The double whammy freeze that swooped down on Florida over Christmas weekend, and then again on New Year's, wiped out millions and millions of dollars worth of fruits and vegetables. So, figured against the enormity of that the loss of my small backyard garden was relatively insignificant. Still, you can't realize how much it pains me to look out on my crippled plot and survey the damage. The blackeye peas the very blackeye peas I planned to pick and eat for good luck on New Year's Day are gone. So is the lettuce, the broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts and eggplant.

Even the collards, which can usually take a lacing of frost lay brown and wasted on the ground, like rows of shriveled corsages from some long-gone prom. And the strawberries The day before the first freeze hit I went out and counted the blossoms on my strawberry plants. Seventy-two tiny white flowers that would soon issue forth 72 luscious red strawberries, followed by dozens and dozens more strawberry milkshakes, strawberry shortcake, strawberries on corn flakes. Yes, I had great plans for that garden. And then the freeze hit Trouble with bad weather is that you can't lay the blame on anyone.

The meteorologists might have been a bit tardy in predicting what was heading our way, but they are mere mortals with no power over the course of clouds. We've always had to shrug off weather as an act of God, and while it might help to petition God to ease up a little bit it doesn't do a bit of good to cuss him. But now there is someone we can cuss, a group of someones, actually, who say they are to blame for the freeze that struck Florida last week and wiped out our crops. Several years ago the Transcendental Meditation movement bought defunct Parsons College in Fairfield, Iowa, and renamed it Mahar-ishl International University, after the Maharishl Mahesh Yogi, a smiling, bearded gent from India who advocates a blissful lifestyle based on strict vegetarianism, clean Uv-. ing and meditation.

Not long ago, the Maharishl had the startling revelation that if enough of the TM practitioners congregated and meditated, then their "collected consciousness" could do everything from reducing the crime rate to ending wars and boosting stock prices. The TM people even put full-page ads in major magazines and newspapers welcoming the world's governments and multi-national conglomerates to come to them for help. And, the week before Christmas, 7,000 meditators arrived in Fairfield for a three-week Taste of Utopia, with twice-a-day, two-hour meditation sessions aimed at solving all the problems of the world. So I called up the Maharishl International University to find out if all this meditating, all this psychic static, might Just be working a number on our weather. I talked with Richard Schneider, official spokesman for Taste of Utopia, a pleasant-sounding fellow who didn't seem a bit disturbed when I suggested that the TM people might be responsible for the Big Freeze down here In Florida.

"There Is every reason to believe that we did have something to do with it said Schneider. Then Schneider began tossing out lines about the "third law of thermodynamics" and how "weather is the most non-linear natural phenomenon!" stuff I didn't even begin to understand so I asked him to make it simple. "Well," he said, "in physics, extreme cold is associated with greater order. That's what we've been trying to do here bring more order to the world. And, in meditation, the mind settles down, the brain's temperature get cooler and the brain waves become clearer and more coherent" With 7,000 people meditating in one spot at the same time, Schneider said, some far-reaching consequences are to be expected.

The TM people are busy monitoring information from all over the world to see what sort of impact their brain waves have had. "We know for a fact that Iowa had fewer traffic accidents over the holidays and we'd like to think we're responsible for that" said Schneider. "Also, the world stock index has really taken off since we began and, in general, there seems to be a warming up between nations." But the weather, Mr. Schneider; it's been freezing. "Well, you can blame us for that" he said.

"Cold weather might be a side effect In achieving world order." So there you have it Still, given the choice, I will take chaos and warmth over order and coolness any day, especially If it means sacrificing my strawberries and collard greens. And curse those who would dare tamper with things. The Florida Citrus Commission estimates its losses at $250 million. Then you've got millions more from lost tomatoes, peppers and ornamental plants. Shoot I figure my own garden was worth a good $1,000, once you calculate the home-grown pleasures I have been denied and the punitive damages I am entitled to.

I say we all get together and send the bill to the Maharishi and his Taste of Utopia. All I know is we are tasting something down here and it darn sure isn't Utopia. Let 'em meditate on that awhile. i pace with the Beatles, but it was equally important the members retain their individuality and not become too much like the Beatles, Easton said. "Everybody tried to become another Beatles.

But you can't make it in show business by being a copy of someone else," Easton said. "We had to play up the differences, so they wouldn't be too much like the Beatles." The Rolling Stones' disheveled hair and wrinkled clothes gave them the reputation of being the bad boys of rock. One of Easton's associates suggested a publicity stunt by having mothers show up at the airport with bars of soap to protest the 'dirty' Rolling Stones. Easton didn't like the idea. "They were wild, earthy.

They didn't have respect for anybody. But they weren't dirty," he said. They really were no different than the Beatles, Easton said, but Ed Sullivan couldn't be convinced. "The Stones were wild, but the Beatles were just as wild. They were the same sort of fellas," he said.

"But Ed Sullivan wouldn't have them. He absolutely refused. I tried to get the Stones on the See EASTON, page 3D more to work on. Dave was very upset about the Stones." But Easton wasn't worried about the Dave Clark Five. He had bigger competition in mind.

He wanted to beat The Beatles. He tried to organize some concert appearances through a friend at a theater called the Prince of Wales. It would give the Stones an edge because the Beatles had not played in the area. "We wanted to do something thet Beatles hadn't done first so I thought maybe an appearance at London's West End. It's London's answer to Broadway," Easton said.

"Brian Epstein and I were sort of rivals, you see. But my friend told Brian he could have the Prince of Wales on Sundays. I was furious, so I went out and put a show on at the Palladium with the Stones. The Stones only did one show at the Palladium, but that's where we beat the Beatles. I was always looking for a way to beat the Beatles, and especially Brian Epstein.

At least we beat the Beatles at one thing." The Beatles, however, were becoming outrageously successful at a whirlwind pace. They played the Ed Sullivan show in February 1964, and within 24 hours "Beatles" was a household word. It was imperative that the Stones keep "The music business was in the doldrums. It was amazing. You'd have to be blind or an idiot not to be interested In them," Easton said.

"But a lot of people were interested in getting them. The thing I think made the Stones want to come with my agency is that I said they could have artistic control in the studio. I financed their production company so we could retain artistic control." Easton said he knew better than to tamper with the Rolling Stones' raucous, energetic sound. It was that primitive non-stop beat that made the group so different he said. That and the charismatic Jagger.

"An artist is what he or she Is born. A manager or producer shouldn't kid himself and think he's made them. You can't mold an artist" Easton said. "I sum It up with the word The difference between two good artists is that the star has charisma. And who can teach charisma?" During the same period Easton was organizing his plans for the Stones, he began managing the Dave Clark Five.

The union didn't last long, though, Easton says, because Clark became upset with Easton's preoccupation with the Stones. Says Easton about the Dave Clark Five, "They were good in their own way, but I thought the Stones had more potential, People's choice The good news column By Marie Inkenbrandt Inside ID The signs of brotherhood 4 While Arabs and Jews try to kill each other In the Middle East, the Arabs and Jews and others in a small Michigan town have learned the value of compromise. Thomas Reis Fort Myers Thomas Reis might be another high school senior to some people, but others know him as a talented young artist Reis, 18, is displaying several pieces of his art at the Tower Gallery in The Bell Tower, Fort Myers. He was chosen as "Student of the Month" by the Tower Gallery Artists' Cooperative, a nonprofit organization designed to help the community be No holds barred for producer 7 Richard Barr hasn't been afraid of the unusual, not when making Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds," not when discovering Edward Albee. He still isn't REIS do, Reis hopes to apply his talent to advertising.

He already has some experience in that area. He designed a sign and brochure for Caloosa Woods Development and has done ads and T-shirt designs for his school. He is the son of Richard and Barbara Reis of Fort Myers. Vincent Belcastro Thomas Carrasquillo Cape Coral Robert Brueck John Hugill Philip Waterman Fort Myers Five local surgeons were among a group of more than 1,600 initiates who recently became Fellows of the American College of Surgeons. Surgeons from Lee County who were accepted were: Vincent J.

Belcastro and Thomas Carrasquillo, both of Cape Coral; Robert John Brueck, John V. Hugill and Philip F. Waterman aU of Fort Myers. To become eligible for a fellowship, an applicant must be a graduate of an approved medical school and have been in practice for at least two years. Applicants must also have complet- See CHOICE, page 3D Do you know someone who has done something out ot the ordinary Perhaps that someone has been rewarded tor a Job well done at work, In school or In a club.

Or maybe that person deserves recognition tor some other accomplishment. It you have some good news to share with our readers, send the Information, and a black-and-white photo It you have one, to: People's Choice, P.O. Bom It, Fort Myers, Fla. 3302. Please Include a telephone number where your people's choice can be reached It we need more Information.

fare League. His art at the Tower Gallery, on exhibit through Jan. 15, has been praised by the public, as well as prominent artists. Being chosen as "Student of the Month" gives Reis more than just the opportunity to have his work on public display. It also gives him the chance to represent himself as an artist watch how sales are handled, deal with the public and learn what galleries are all about He believes the experience to be inspiring.

"It's made me feel useful," he said. "I think it's the biggest thing that's ever happened to me." Since his success at the gallery, he has decided to make art a major part in his career. "Before, I didn't think I'd go into art because it's such a risky thing. Now, I definitely would like to get into art," he said. Although he's still not sure exactly what he'll come aware of local art The student program is open to all local high school and college students who meet the qualifications set by the co-op's Juried panel.

As an elementary and middle school student Reis was required to take general art classes, but he didn't take art seriously until he studied it under the direction of local artists Greg Biolchlni and Ohzanah Jensson. It was Biolchinl who generated Reis' Interest In pastels during the summer of his sophomore year. It was under Blolchlnl's guidance that Reis began to hone his art skills. Last year one of his pastel paintings won first place In the Edison Community College Student Competition sponsored by the Junior Wel- Quality makes a stand 0 NBC has put its "fl best shows on one night, says one TV critic: "Family Ties," "Cheers," "Buffalo Bill," and "Hill Street Blues.".