The Lions, The Churchills & some Chocolate
Ernest Samuel Llime - May, 2009 - Woodhaven

I have lived in Israel for 14 years. My ties to that country are still quite strong. This is just about all the introduction I care to make just now, so that I can get to the actual subject: Israeli pop/rock music & me.
The sixties (that's when I got there at the age of 14) were a musically enlightening period in my life. I did not care very much for the early 60's Israeli music scene; it was mostly Russian & Middle-Easter influenced folk. In retrospect I realize that some of it was quite good and I do listen to that sometimes, however, what was getting my blood to flow faster was Rock'n'Roll. Elvis was O.K. but my favorite singer was Cliff Richard. In those days he was just a punk and his repertoire included every rocking style you could imagine. I do not think anyone dreamed that he would one day be knighted. His voice would be velvety and extremely seductive one moment and screeching like an animal or Little Richard the next. I did get to see him once and was not disappointed. It was a highlight of my teenage years - amazing that they granted the guy a visa - the Ministry of Education later on managed to prevail upon other governmental offices and deny the Beatles that same privilege. In the late 60's & early 70's things improved a bit and I did get to see some more foreign bands the greatest of which was by far "Mungo Jerry."
The local bands that I remember from the mid sixties were "The Sing-Sing" and "The Blue Stars" - they were quite interesting and while the Sing-Sing covered just about everything, the Blue Stars specialized in surf music which was quite a novelty for me.
During '67 & '68 I was stationed in a town named Rosh Pina which was only about 20 miles from Tiberias - is a very happening city on the shores of the sea of Galilee. Most club/restaurants would book a band for the weekend and you could have a bite and a drink in between the dancing, in your bathing suit. When I got too hot I could just jump into the sea to cool off. So that is were I became more aware of the booming local music scene. Bands like "The Spiders", "Uzi & the Styles" & "The Chocolate" played those clubs and me and a few of my mates would sneak off to catch a band whenever we thought we could get away with it.  Some of them got busted one day when they "borrowed" the base ambulance to drive to town. Luckily, I missed that one.
Anyway. my memory is not that great anymore and trying to research that scene proves difficult; I do not possess a Hebrew keyboard and the English sites are missing a lot of the info I am looking for. For instance, I loved "The Chocolate" band, but all I remember is that they did a really great cover of "The Tremeloes - Suddenly You Love me" - I also remember that Tvizka Pick & Shuki Levy were in that band. Surprisingly I haven't found any mention of that even though Tvika Pick became a major pop star in Israel & Europe (he wrote the Israeli Eurovision winner for Diva International) & Shuki Levy became a major Hollywood composer and movie producer (Power Rangers and many others.)
The Lions were playing that scene way too many times for my taste - they sounded like a watered-down version of the Beach Boys (I was never a fan.) O.K. they're sound was really good for an Israeli band of the time. I do however curse the day they broke up - it was a day of mourning for Israeli music, because their bass player and vocalist Dany Shushan joined the greatest of all bands "The Churchills" and single-handedly managed to destroy them. The sad story continues till today, because once in a while "The Churchills" do re-union concerts and he's always there.
The Churchills were by far the greatest thing that ever happened to Israeli music!
By that I mean the '68-'69 Churchill's band:

You can find more info about them on wikipedia and other sites so I am not going to dwell on that. I just want to say that the first time I heard them cover "Set Me Free" (I didn't at the time hear the "Vanilla Fudge" cover) I was hooked. I probably went to more than 20 of their shows and I would never budge from the speakers. Until today, I think that  Stan Solomon was the greatest and most soulful singer I have ever experienced in a live setting. IN 1969 he decided for personal reasons to leave the band and on a very very sad day the remaining  members replaced him with Dany Shushan. One of the greatest disappointments in my life was seeing the Churchills at the first Israeli Rock Concert (I think it was 1970) allow this guy to butcher songs like "Living, Loving" & "She's a Woman" - the rest of the boys proved over and again that they still had the chops whether it was playing with Shalom Chanoch, Arik Einsteinn or any of their other numerous projects. Go to http://blip.fm/VertLime to listen - I have uploaded the Churchills' double CD to my server and have blipped the entire collection including Dany Shushan's leads. - you be the judge.

On a more personal note, by 1969 my English was good enough for me to start singing in that language, so I started my own band. "The Surprise" - I was aided in that by a kid who brought a Beatle bass from Germany - he wanted to be a drummer so he sold me the bass. The band was completed by my upstairs neighbor Shlomo and later on another kid named Cobi. We didn't have any equipment, so I used my Sony tape deck and an old radio for amplification. The rehearsals took place in our bomb shelter (every one's got one in Israel.)


Me on top shelter entrance with my beloved Beatle bass.

 Our marketing skills were obviously non- existent a fact driven home by the take from our first show 1.87 IL (Israeli Lira - it was probably about 50 cents in U.S. money.) The drummer left us and we eventually replaced him with someone a bit older and with some experience (it sucks but I forgot the guy's name.) We changed our name to "The Love Machine" and played some more gigs.


The Love Machine - l-r: Drummer, Me, Shlomo, Cobi

We got a manager who owned a dilapidated PA and wanted me to leave the band and embark on a solo career - I wouldn't hear of it. He kept booking gigs that called for me to attempt singing a-la James Brown (which I hated) and French and Spanish songs (drove me up a wall - though in my fifties I sang in an ethnic band and kind of liked it.) About a year later Shlomo joined the IDF and that was that for the band. We looked for potential band mates amongst University of Haifa students (I fell in love with a guitar one of them was playing - a Hagstrom - got one now.) Cobi would never stop wailing when he had a guitar in hand so nothing came of that. A bit after, the long arm of the IDF grabbed him, so that was that. I had to sell my bass because I didn't have enough money to repay the loan I took when I bought it. We lost track of the drummer.
After the service Shlomo joined a kibbutz and Cobi went into banking. I went on to DJ at the 120 Club in Haifa for a few years, got married and suffered through a permanently failing marriage and a long career as a Technical Support Specialist.
In '73-'74, after Cobi finished his 3 years of IDF duty the two of us attempted to put together another band. We had some rehearsals with Kitsch & Poliker but my wife kept complaining about the potential late hours of a musician so I actually gave that up. I didn't think much of the two of them anyway, They belonged to a class of Israeli wanna-be-rockers who didn't speak English but they insisted on singing in it - sounded quite funny. Poliker used to work in a salon that belonged to his mom I believe and we used to laugh at his attempts to pick up riffs from the radio in between drying customers' hair - cooky kid - like the one who used to sit in the window and pretend to play guitar (I don't think he knew how at the time,) to impress the girls. Later on Richard (the window kid) actually became a studio musician and movie music composer. In the '80's Kitsch and Poliker had a couple of hits with their band "Benzine" and after the band broke Kitsch wrote a couple of good songs for the movie "Volkan Junction" (Haiim Romano of Churchills fame was the music director.) Yehuda Poliker became one of the top Israeli pop stars.
The music itch never left me - over the years I have played in other bands and I have written quite a few songs that I am very happy with. I never quite reached a point where I could give up my IT career and get back into music until now. I have finally retired from that and am slowly getting back into the field where I belong. Check out some of my songs here: http://www.llime.com Musically speaking it is too bad that I have left Israel all these years ago. Cobi who has been a banker for many years now got together with Kitsch and a couple of younger kids and they are playing again.
I still hope that we will do some stuff together eventually.
All of this gut spilling was caused by them Churchills and my once and future hopes.

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© 2009 Ernest Samuel Llime All Rights Reserved.