Beat Blog

Gregg Rolie was a founding member of Santana and Journey. Prior to that he was the keyboard player and lead singer for William Penn and His Pals. He went to the same high school as I did in Palo Alto.

Our band manager Vern Justice and I had seen Gregg perform with his group The Diabolics at a local show we headlined. Our original keyboard player, Dave Lovell had quit several times. We then auditioned several other guys as a backup plan but picked Gregg because he had a great voice. He ultimately replaced our original lead singer Neil Holtman.

All the songs on our CD’s for William Penn are sung by Gregg Rolie (except one).

Gregg had such a great sense of humor. He could have us all rolling on the floor laughing. He used to have a routine called Danny The Deer where he’d put his hands up on his forehead like antlers. He would then look around nervously like he was being hunted.

Of course, the girls also loved him. I started to notice the audience had all the beautiful girls on his side of the stage. Carlos Santana and Mike Carabello came down to see William Penn play at the Long Shoreman’s hall in San Francisco to check him out. After William Penn split up Gregg formed Santana with Carlos.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 21st, 2009 at 3:56 pm by Shapiro and is filed under Bay Area Music Scene. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.