Humor
Remembering Paul Revere of The Raiders
October 5, 2014 
By DAVE FRAZIER,
Guardian Editor
Rock and roll lost a crazy character Saturday with the death of Paul Revere, 76 who used to be a local barber before hitting the big time in the 1960’s. He had a summer place in Garden Valley and a home he once told me is “a huge mansion” in Branson, Missouri.
Revere — whose birth name was Paul Revere Dick, was frontman for the band that often performed in three-cornered hats and other costumes harking back to the Ameican Revolution.
Revere was born in Nebraska and played in bands in Idaho and Oregon, according to a tribute on the band website written by Roger Hart, who managed the group in the early days. Hart said he took the band to Hollywood and signed them to a deal with CBS/Columbia Records. The band recorded a string of hits in the 1960s and early 1970s, including “Kicks,” “Hungry” and “Indian Reservation.” Revere, the band’s organist, had a hyperactive effervescent stage personality and came to be known as “the madman of rock ‘n’ roll.”
I shot a layout for PEOPLE Magazine in the late 1970’s featuring the rock star and his new (at that time) real estate career. He had just purchased the land at Federal Way and Amity which was the old Boise Gun Club. The clubhouse/home later burned and the area has been a housing development for years off Amity Road.
A few years after the People shoot in about 1980, I met him at Albertson’s while buying ingredients for a Christmas coffee drink. We chatted a bit and he came over to the house to taste the drink.
Over coffee we talked about his past and he said, “We were the hottest thing on TV back in 1967 and 68 with “Where The Action Is” on ABC. I confessed that I had not seen the show.
“Where WERE you back then?” he asked.
I explained I was serving in the Army in Vietnam and without missing a beat he said, “Oh. I don’t think we played there.”
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Comments & Discussion
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Oct 6, 2014, 9:02 am
I remember attending local dance clubs when he and Mark Lindsey first got a start.
Oct 6, 2014, 9:22 am
I never met Paul, but I knew his brother who was an LDS bishop in Boise, back in the 60s. (The equivalent of a “pastor” in a protestant congregation. Interesting divergence of life paths.)
In 1968, when the Guardian was in Vietnam, THE big concert in Boise was Paul Revere and the Beach Boys at Bronco Stadium. Naturally the Boise connection was played up significantly.
As far as I can remember, it was the first rock concert I ever attended. The Raiders were pretty good, but frankly the Beach Boys overshadowed them significantly, with their endless stream of hit songs. Both bands offered up great shows.
Oct 6, 2014, 12:47 pm
I never saw PR&R live, but did get interested after seeing a nice exhibit about them at the Experience Music Project in Seattle.
BB- I was not born then but did see the Beach Boys another time in Boise. It was my first concert too!
Oct 6, 2014, 3:56 pm
My story about Paul Revere is that I was working as a teller at the “Old” Bank of Idaho ( only us born and raised Idaho folks would remember where that was at).
He came in to go to his safety deposit box and some one didn’t buzz him in fast enough. Well he decide to jump over the counter and didn’t make and fell flat on his face. He waited for the buzzer after that.
EDITOR NOTE–Porc, I hate to burst your (“only us born and raised Idaho folks”) balloon, but the day I got my account 46 years ago at Bank of Idaho, a secretary at city hall looked over the top of her spectacles and admonished me, “You know, Bank of Idaho is NOT locally owned!” I felt like the outsider I was back then.
Oct 7, 2014, 4:53 am
Writer note…
Mr. Guardian… Yes but us old Boise folks know where the the main office of the Bank of Idaho used to be. If I remember it was the tallest building in Boise back in the day.
EDITOR NOTE–You are correct, as usual. I am accused regularly of wanting to go back to 1970s Boise.
Oct 7, 2014, 8:20 am
Ah, nostalgia!
The Guardian will surely remember that the Bank of Idaho “skyscraper” was the first building to encroach on the commanding view of the Statehouse, looking north from the Depot… and because of that it generated controversy. The view-preservationists lost, and now you can’t see the Bank of Idaho building on account of the taller bank building and the Eggo Hotel.
But I digress.
Oct 7, 2014, 3:36 pm
I never met the man, never saw him in concert but I still spin his vinyl on my Moterola counsole, I remember Where the Action Is. I’m still a PRR fan afer all these years.
Oct 7, 2014, 7:43 pm
His babysitter babysat for my sister. Only time I saw him is when he fell at the Bank of Idaho ( was making $2.50 a hour then)…. except for that one time at New Years eve in Jackpot….. but that is another story that involves Ron Yanke and his plane….at the Jackpot International airport… Lets not go there
Oct 12, 2014, 12:42 pm
I sat next to Mr. Revere on a plane from San Francisco to Boise years ago. I had no idea who he was until he formally introduced himself. A very warm and outgoing person and we chatted most of the trip to Boise.