I remember someone walking in to London Org, asking how many copies of that dreadful LP record he could buy as they were a limited issue and therefore worth money, he knew they were not worth listening to. It was the Apollo Stars, god it was a terrible.
I had an SO1 letter for years, it had a really unconvincing rubber stamp 'signature' in bright green. I know some letters were written by Hubbard, but I don't think I ever saw one.
What most people do not know about The Apollo Stars and the POS album:
1. How we came to be: We were in docked in Madiera, Portugal, one of our most favorite ports of call to be in at Christmas time. The local townsfolk were planning a Christmas musical festival in the townsquare and somebody (I think it was the town Mayor or some such) asked our PR person if we had any musicians on board, to which she replied "Yes". So an invitation was extended to the Apollo "musicians" to partake and perform. So LRH immediately gets wind of this and ordered any musicians on board to report immediately to the PR lounge. Now mind you there was no band on the ship. Just some individuals who just miraculously happened to have their instruments on board. Billy (William) Potter (saxophonist - and a damn good one) ran down to where all the Mimeo File cabinets were (containing all the Policies and Bulletins and Flag orders etc...) I was Mimeo files I/C. He told me to hurry up to the PR lounge. I asked "What for? I don't have an instrument" He replied "Man, I hear you 'drumming" on top of the file cabinets all the time and there is a pair of bongos in the PR lounge. I went with him to the lounge where 7 other guys had gathered. LRH ordered us to get some tunes together RIGHT NOW! And when LRH orders you to do something RIGHT NOW...you DO IT! So we started by asking each other what songs do you know and we came up with 4. The "show" was the very next evening" Man did we SUCK! (According to our own analysis) but the townsfolk LOVED US! Go figure. We were invited to come back and perform again 5 days later for the New Years celebration. LRH granted us rehearsal time. We learned a couple of more tunes plus we polished up on the other 4 and we performed again. This time we sounded much better. NOT by any means great...but it didn't suck The PR person reports to LRH about how wonderful we were received with such rave response and applause and there was a nice article in the next mornings local paper about The Apollo and it's band of musicians! The proverbial "light bulb" goes off above LRH's head and he orders us to rehearse longer and longer each day and eventually appoints us as full time musicians now having seen our worthiness to improving PR for the ship everywhere we went. At first many crew members resented us for having such full time FUN posts while they had to do their not so fun posts., but eventually after Captain Bill Robertson (who was appointed our Musical Director) stepped down, LRH personally took over. LRH did NOT make many personal appearances on board. He was always in his office. But now the crew got to see him all the time, every day working with us. Now the crew started to really like us and our music and we got better and better. There you have it!
2. Shortly thereafter, the "notorious" POS album was recorded by LRH on a mediocre sound board of poor quality, in a theatre with lousy acoustics, assisted by Dan Auerbach. This took place only after we had been together as a band less than two months.
I cannot fathom why LRH, who supposedly held such high standards in everything he was involved in, would record us so prematurely, let alone allow the album to be produced and distributed to such mixed reviews Worldwide. And that horrendous cover album to boot! Yuk, puke.
Also FYI I wish to dispense the "myth' that band members were fined $1 for each wrongly played music note. Irrefutably NOT true, period.
3. When we were allowed to rehearse full time and began playing gigs in every port of call that we went to, we had become a very tight knit band - each musician had truly developed great chops and skill. we performed for free in town squares, hospitals, theatres, parades and with local bands such as the police band in Kingston, Jamaica. Local artisans came aboard and performed for the crew as part of a cultural exchange program. We recorded a lot of songs consisting of originals (like "Hombre" a Spaghetti Western type Clint Eastwood movie sound track composed by myself which audiences loved everywhere) and many well known popular songs, like some of The Beatles, in a proper studio with upscale recording equipment, but it was never produced nor distributed...so you all never got to hear how great we had evolved into. With our horn section, I would compare us to the band "Chicago" - and I mean just as good and tight when it comes to musicianship. (This is my personal opinion of course...and I was THERE...I was in The Apollo Stars. You were NOT a witness to what we had become and earned many awards such as plaques, keys to the City, honors. We were even on the radio.
4. It is unfortunate that a cassette tape that I had recorded of one of our full time rehearsals, which clearly represented the great band we had become was lent by me to a friend and I never got it back. I regret this to this day as being one of the stupidest mistakes I have ever made. Had I still owned that tape, I would have uploaded it to YouTube years ago for all of you folks to compare THAT to the POS album. If you listen closely to the POS album, putting aside the musical errors and critical comments you would actually hear a band whose beginnings and eventual development was very promising. NO band on this Earth started day one being totally professional and flawless. It takes months and months to smoothen out the roughness and work together like cogs in a gear.
3. So while there are many disparaging comments about the POS and us musicians...I just wanted to present the true facts.
Sincerely yours,
TR (percussionist, guitar, keyboard, composer of The Apollo Stars (1973-1975) Now age 70