The Rascals, still groovin' after 60 years, return to Long Island where they got their start

The band members hailed from New Jersey, upstate New York and even Canada, but for Long Islanders, The Rascals have always been an honorary local band.

That’s because during the summer of 1965, The Rascals played six nights a week at a Hamptons nightclub called The Barge. There, the four musicians developed their chops, honed their stage presence and built a grassroots following. It’s where many fans heard the band’s future hit “Good Lovin’ ” for the first time, and it’s how The Rascals wound up signing with a major label that would propel them into the Top 40 nine times over the coming years.

“It was fantastic,” Gene Cornish, The Rascals’ guitarist, says of The Barge. “We had every record label in the country wanting to sign us up.”

Cornish and original singer-keyboardist Felix Cavaliere are returning to Long Island as part of The Rascals’ 60th anniversary tour. Only a very few classic-rock acts have passed that milestone, including The Who (1964), The Rolling Stones (1962) and The Beach Boys (1961). When the two Rascals arrive at the Patchogue Theatre for the Performing Arts on April 19, they’ll perform with a group of younger musicians but minus original drummer Dino Danelli, who died in 2022, and original singer-percussionist Eddie Brigati, who hasn’t played with the group for many years. Still, audiences can expect to hear such Rascals classics as “Groovin’,” “A Beautiful Morning” and “How Can I Be Sure.”

“You know, the body feels old,” Cornish, 80, says, “but the spirit feels young.”

IN THE BEGINNING

The prehistory of The Rascals begins in 1963, when Cavaliere, a classically trained pianist from Pelham, took a summer break from studying premed at Syracuse University to play in a band at a Catskills hotel. Also playing there, Cavaliere recalls: Joey Dee and the Starliters, known for their 1961 hit “Peppermint Twist.” Before the year was over, he had replaced the Starliters’ organ player for a tour of Europe. On one date, their opening band was The Beatles.

“I walked into a screaming horde of nice-looking women,” Cavaliere recalls. “And I said to myself, ‘Wow, look at this, man!’ That’s what made me decide to leave college and go into show business.”

With fellow Starliter Cornish (Canadian born, but raised in Rochester), Danelli (from Jersey City) and Brigati (the younger brother of another Starliter, David Brigati), Cavaliere formed The Rascals in Garfield, New Jersey. Dressed in collared shirts, miniature ties and knickers, the band members certainly stood out — and they could play. A stint at the local Choo Choo Club, says Cornish, led to an invitation to a summer residency at The Barge, a newly opened nightclub in East Quogue.

SUCCESS IN THE HAMPTONS

An actual barge that was roughly 70 years old at the time, according to one report, the club was done up in nautical decor — fishnets, lobster pots, oil lamps, barrel seats. Moored at the foot of Triton Lane, just off Dune Road, The Barge beckoned clubgoers with bright lanterns that were easy to spot on dark nights in the semirural Hamptons.

“This is where all the elite and most of the business owners of record companies, et cetera, go for the summer,” Cavaliere says he reckoned at the time. “So I knew I was going to have a great audience, and great potential to be seen and heard.” Granted, the pay was low — “dollars and cents,” is all Cavaliere can remember — but the gig came with a free house for the band right on the beach across from the club. “I said, ‘This could be a lot worse.’ ”

By late June, The Barge had become one of New York’s hottest nightclubs. Actor Sybil Burton and the playwright Arthur Laurents showed up; so did Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, according to Cornish. The club also drew such highborn figures as Helen Shields (of Old Westbury, descended from the prominent Phipps family) and Sharon McCluskey (of the Lehmans, as in Lehman Brothers). Even the club’s British soundman, Adrian Barber, was a bit of a celebrity: He had manned the boards for The Beatles at the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany.

Still, The Rascals wanted a younger crowd, according to Cornish. “We offered the club we would play for nothing on the seventh night if they took away the alcohol and charged a dollar,” he says. “We wanted to test our music out, and see what the reaction would be with the teenagers. And one of the songs we were playing at the time was ‘Good Lovin' ' before we recorded it.”

Then as now, nightclubs insisted that bands play covers of popular hits, Cavaliere says — no original music. "Good Lovin' " had already been released by a couple of bands, most notably  the Los Angeles R&B group The Olympics. The Rascals also played “Mustang Sally,” originally recorded by Mack Rice before Wilson Pickett staked his claim to it in 1966.(It would become the B-side of "Good Lovin'.'') Cavaliere says he found cover songs by listening to R&B radio stations and then purchasing the 45s so he could prove they weren’t originals. “Look, man, this is not mine!” he recalls telling skeptical club owners. “This is a real record!”

The offbeat choices, Cavaliere adds, “made our set more interesting, more unique, because a lot of people never even heard these songs.”

On the club’s split-level stage, says Cornish, he and Brigati performed on the lower level while Danelli and Cavaliere played on the upper. The band became such a hit that Rascals buttons were sold during shows. “The crowd is a writhing mass of arms and torsos,” Newsday reported of a Saturday night at The Barge in August 1965. A girl in the audience gushed over Brigati: “He’s like a Teddy bear. He’s so lovable.”

Eventually, Sid Bernstein — the music promoter who brought The Beatles to the United States — was persuaded to check out The Rascals at The Barge. “We put on our knickers, we turned on the lights and the sound system, and we did a 20-minute set for him,” Cornish recalls. “He said: I don't know what I saw just now, but it's amazing.”

Bernstein took on the band and led them to a deal with Atlantic Records, where — initially as The Young Rascals — they would record a string of hits, including “I’ve Been Lonely Too Long,” "It’s Wonderful” and “People Got to Be Free,” all written by Cavaliere and Brigati.

HALL OF FAMERS

In 1997, The Rascals were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame by longtime champion Steven Van Zandt. “In the center of the universe — New Jersey — The Rascals were the first band,” Van Zandt said during his speech. And yet, the Rock Hall’s official essay, written by New York City guitarist Lenny Kaye, begins by connecting The Rascals with “The Long Island Sound.”

“Depending on who you talk to, they’re either a New Jersey band or a Long Island band,” says Jason Hanley, the Rock Hall’s vice president of education and audience engagement, who was raised in Holbrook. “You can imagine being at Smith Point or in the Hamptons, and listening to ‘Groovin,’ and it just feels like a Long Island summer.”

THE RASCALS TODAY

Cornish, who lived in Woodbury for a time but now lives in North Bergen, New Jersey, suffered a heart arrhythmia in 2018 and received a pacemaker that same year. These days, he plays sitting down. “I have a problem with my legs, but otherwise I’m good,” he says brightly. “I take my meds and I go to work.”

Cavaliere, 82, says he misses working with Brigati, who last played with the band on “The Rascals: Once Upon a Dream,” a hybrid concert-and-musical that made its Broadway debut in 2013 before launching a national tour. Cavaliere also salutes the late Danelli as a “magnificent drummer” and a crucial driver of the band’s live energy. But he praises the current Rascals musicians, many of whom are based in Nashville, where he now lives.

“Some people call this working,” Cavaliere says of the tour. “This has never been work for me. This is a joy, to be able to make music.”

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com