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The Mandala
Opportunity / Lost Love - 7"
KR - 1967
Michael Panontin
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With the Rogues, keyboard player Josef Chirowski, bassist Don Elliot and drummer Whitey Glan cut their soul teeth in the clubs on Toronto's Yonge Street, most notably at Club Bluenote, where they were the house band in the summer of 1964. When singer George Olliver and guitarist Domenic Troiano climbed aboard, they rechristened themselves the Five Rogues and then the Mandala and got ready to take Toronto by storm.
With an aggressive manager shovelling up the hype and a shtick that included strobe lights and matching pin-stripe suits, the band would whip teenagers into a frenzy, especially with Olliver's messianic command at the microphone, a sort of pasty white incarnation of Wilson Pickett and James Brown.
The Mandala soon started calling their shows a 'soul crusade'. As the lead crusader, Olliver was indefatigable. On one occasion at The Hawk's Nest, he ran downstairs and out onto Yonge Street with the crowd following him out the door. Olliver raced around to the rear entrance and then back on stage, with the kids in thrall to his every move.
"The Mandala are about to take off," gushed journalist Jack Batten. "They're going to make the Toronto Sound big...Big sound, big money, big everything." Buoyed by all the hype on the home front, the group signed on with the William Morris Agency in the US, who briskly hooked them up with a gig at the Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles followed by a three-week stint at the Hullabaloo club in November 1966, where according to newspaper reports "teeny-boppers thronged the stage clutching at Olliver and dragging drummer Whitey Glan off his perch."
The guys returned to Toronto as stars. They were back at The Hawk's Nest one night when Bo Diddley, who was performing downstairs at the Le Coq d'Or, caught sight of their act and upon returning to Chicago spread the word to his label, Chess Records. 'Opportunity' was recorded in the Chess studios, with the Dells singing back-up, and issued in January '67 on Chess' KR subsidiary. For a bunch of Toronto boys, it was the opportunity of a lifetime.
"I had a chance to record right in the vocal booth that Billy Stewart did 'Summertime'. I was on an all-time high," Olliver recently told Roxanne Tellier.
'Opportunity' was popular right from the get-go. "It was an instant hit," Olliver recalled. "We had to work to get it on CHUM. But once it was on CHUM, all the other stations right across Canada picked it up immediately." By February, the record had reached an almost unimaginable #3 slot on that station's chart. But despite the song's intro ("We came 3,000 miles from Canada to LA...") and that infectious rhythm and funky guitar/organ dance, there was little interest south of the border.
After the follow-up single, 'Give and Take', reached a respectable #21 on CHUM, the group set their sights on a full-length LP. Unfortunately, the strains of constant gigging, including several stints in New York, and the paltry $40-dollar-a-week salaries they were forced to live on, led a frustrated Olliver to jump ship. He was replaced by the equally capable Roy Kenner. Kenner and the group scored a top-ten on CHUM with 'Love-Itis' in the summer of '68.
But with the release of their LP delayed by Atlantic and a final single that flopped, the Mandala's days were numbered. They played their final gig, fittingly at The Hawk's Nest, in June '69, and then took their rightful place in the history books.
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