Looking Back

Now, 43 years after the fact, Rand and Prouty look back fondly on their past rock ‘n’ roll days. “We played music. That was the best fun that I had there and I have John Kerry to thank for that,” Rand says.

To Rand, Kerry’s dedication and passion were key to the success of the Electras. “He was the essential ingredient,” he says. “We, as a band, had tremendous fun together and that would not have been possible if we hadn’t worked together. John was a very resolute, dedicated musician.”

Kerry extended that dedication to everything he did, says Rand. “He was a scholar. He was an athlete. He was a musician. He was a great debater and he was also involved in social work,” he says.

Rand also points to a general worldliness, perhaps attributable to his upbringing. “His father was involved in foreign services,” notes Rand. “John had a cosmopolitan upbringing. His family was not particularly wealthy, but he had exposure to different countries and different cultures.”

Prouty describes the teenage Kerry as shy, not to be confused with standoffish.

“Some of which has been misinterpreted as aloofness is quite simply that he’s shy and reflective and intellectual and gives matters consideration,” says Prouty. “Some people that have those qualities of being reserved and reflective are perceived as being aloof. And the truth is, reflecting from those years when we knew him so well, that simply wasn’t the case.”

Prouty is hopeful that the recent attention to Kerry’s high school life will shed some light on the other, more fun side of Kerry that does not always come out in debates and conventions.

“John Kerry was a fun human person with a dimension and a side of him that we were cognizant of way back when,” says Prouty. “This isn’t just a political exercise in trying to describe how he is today. This is how he was.”

He adds, “We were with him for four years in school and two years in a band. We hope our observations about him will help people appreciate this human, warm, fun side of Kerry, and also some of his more serious attributes of character in making their decision to change leadership in this country, which we desperately need.”

One of Rand’s most amusing memories from his time with the Electras took place during a performance at Concord Academy, an all-girls school in Massachusetts. At the end of their tenth song, “Rawhide” by Duane Eddy, the band suffered what was for them a major embarrassment—the rumbling noise of unintentional feedback sounded from the stage.

“Both of us [Rand and Prouty] were thoroughly embarrassed by this sound that we did not plan to make. And in those days that was not part of the music that you played except for possibly one or two performers that might have dabbled in it, but this was totally unintentional,” says Rand.

While the other band members looked around furtively to identify the source of the noise, Kerry appeared unperturbed, even focused.

“John was simply looking at his amplifier very calm and collective,” says Rand. “So maybe he was experimenting with feedback in music before Jimi Hendrix.”

The band was actually recording the performance that night and captured the impromptu feedback on tape. Rand only recently discovered that tape and it has caused some discussion that it may mark the earliest recording of the feedback technique, which was made standard during the psychedelic era a few years down the road.