The Godz with The Beggars

In the beginning — sometime in early 1976 — The Godz was formed by Eric Moore, Glen Cataline, and Mark Chatfield in Columbus, Ohio. Eric and Glen had been playing in local favorite band Sky King. They met and befriended Mark, who was just out of high school and working at Whitey Lunzar Music. After “jamming” together a couple of times, things just felt right. Mike Adams (keyboards/guitar/vocals) and Hayward Law (drums) were soon recruited from the Parkersburg, West Virginia band Kingsley Fink. That gave The Godz something few bands had — two drummers.

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Rehearsals started at The Godz “Band House” on Summit Street, just

north of the OSU campus. (Think Animal House, but much, much worse.)

The band’s repertoire consisted of cover tunes, with a couple of

originals mixed in. They played in clubs around central Ohio and West

Virginia and gained a formidable following. Then tragedy struck in the

spring of 1976. Mike and Hayward were killed in a car accident.

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Bob Hill, Eric and Glen’s bandmate in Sky King and Eric’s bandmate

in The Capital City Rockets, was brought in on guitar and vocals.

At that point, The Godz abandoned the two-drummer concept and

remained a four-piece band. More originals were being mixed in the

set as the band ventured to clubs in New York, Illinois, Michigan,

West Virginia, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and all over Ohio. Somewhere

between local club owners getting tired of dealing with the band and

the band tiring of dealing with club owners, management was procured.

The band began playing The Agora Ballroom in Columbus in more of a

concert setting.

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The first shows drew modest crowds, but almost overnight, The Godzwere selling out the room beyond capacity — (maybe because of their penchant for doing encores in bikini underwear and MC’s red sequined jockstrap….probably not….). Most likely the fact that they were playing a brand of kick-ass rock & roll, the likes of which Columbus had never seen on a local level. Lots of radio promotion from WCOL FM (even though the band had no recorded product) and an article in Creem Magazine created buzz in the music industry.

Record companies flew in to see The Godz’s Agora shows, and national acts (including Budgie from the U.K.) opened for the yet-unsigned band. Don Ienner, VP of Millennium Records(a subsidiary of Casablanca Recordsand owned by Jimmy Ienner), offered the band a recording contract. Don Brewer of Grand Funk Railroad fame was enlisted to produce, with Mark Stebbeds engineering. The band was signed based on live performances, without ever doing a demo or even being in a studio.

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