The album Crack the Sky reached 161 on the Billboard album chart, not bad for a debut. Still, everyone involved in the group was disappointed it didn't do better.
"The marketing sucked," Palumbo says. "We got pretty decent airplay but they didn't know how to support it. They were clueless."
To this, Minogue agrees. "Records were promised but never arrived at the distribution centers. The record would be on the radio but there would be no product on the stores or visa versa. When people wanted it, it would never be available."
Minogue quite clearly remembers the one place the marketing did work: Baltimore. "It was by blind luck. They happened to have a surplus of records shipped them and they were accidentally put on display in the stores when it was being played on the radio. So it became a monster hit in Baltimore and no place else."
To this day, Minogue feels that if that debut album was marketed correctly, it would have been a smash.
Besides airplay, the only other way to sell records was touring, and Crack crisscrossed the country frequently. Who they've opened for, or split bills with, now reads like candidate list for a classic rock hall of fame: Supertramp, Rush, Foreigner, Yes, Z.Z. Top, Edgar Winter, Frank Zappa, Boston.
Not that the road was glamorous. Witkowski swears some of the scenes in the movie Spinal Tap were lifted from their tours. "We actually got lost on way to the stage one time in a theater in Wisconsin. We couldn't find our way up through all these little alcoves in the back." They made record-signing appearances in stores where no one showed up. They opened for bluegrass legend Earl Scruggs and were pelted with orange peels. They played a dance club in Canada in front of a hostile disco crowd.
Constant touring, however, was turning them into a, ahem, crack live band. "When we were on, we were on," Witkowski boasts. "We had a few songs where we did a lot of jamming. We would try to go outside as far as we could go and then try to get back."
They were getting so tight, in fact, that according to Palumbo, they were booted off a few packages for showing up the headliners.
"ELO knocked us right off because we kicked the shit out of them," Palumbo boasts. "They were good players but never really jelled, especially when you saw them live."
"Kansas threw us off, same reason. Styx threw us off, same reason."
What was becoming apparent from all this constant touring was what the masses wanted was not complex musical noodling, but simple headbanging party music. "The acts that were scoring big, like Ted Nugent, were getting over because they were just rocking out," Palumbo recalls. Some of the other members thought it might be a good idea to indulge the crowds somewhat.
Palumbo wouldn't have it. "I never really considered us a rock and roll band. Never. I thought we were a musical band. The last thing I was about to do was play into that nonsense of `Everybody clap your hands.' No, that's not going to happen."
After the first album failed go gold, the band grew disillusioned. "We had heard across the board how wonderful we were, `but we're not millionaires. Something is wrong here,'" Palumbo recalls. Each guy was earning only $250 a week in "allowance," drawn from future royalties.
Aggravating this situation was the ever-increasing size of the young Palumbo's ego.
Today, he recounts his behaviors like he was another person entirely. "Rolling Stone was writing about my brilliance and all these trade papers were saying I was the next whatever," he recalls. "And I bought it. I really bought it: `Yes, I am brilliant and yes I do understand things most people don't.'"
Rolling Stone's review of the first album doted on Palumbo's lyrics for paragraphs. Even though the rest of the band (and Minogue, who artfully arranged the strings and brass) contributed just as much, they were barely mentioned. Witkowski was referred to once, and his name was misspelled.
Needless to say, "That attitude didn't make things very compatible, especially when you're with a bunch of people day in and day out, going cross country in a station wagon," Palumbo says.
"His ego was phenomenally large," Griffith agrees. "He was probably the most obnoxious person on earth to be around. It was a nightmare."
Today, Witkowski is quickest to defend the lead singer. Yet he even admits that Palumbo "did a couple of things during the course of our career that put us a few steps back."
Witkowski remembers a showcase at the Bottom Line in New York where Palumbo made derisive comments about Helen Reddy. Reddy's management team, who were in the audience, found the remarks none too funny.
Such arrogance was by design, Witkowski defends Palumbo. After all, rock and roll is all about attitude. For a band in desperate search of a good management team, it may not have been the smartest move.
When it was time for the second album to be recorded, the band holed up in a hotel in Toronto to write new material. By then, people at Lifesong was dropping hints that Palumbo should try to write more songs that could be hit singles.