Paul Revere’s Raiders carry on without founding ‘Madman’

The Raiders riding on without Paul Revere. Unbelievable? Inconceivable?

Not really. The American pop-rockers are more like their ’60s Motown counterparts when it comes to a group with many permutations and many, many alumni even before its colorful founder died last October.

Remember it was Mark Lindsay, not Revere, who was lead singer in the band’s heyday, voicing the signature 1966 hit “Kicks” and its surprise late-inning No. 1 “Indian Reservation” in 1971.

The founding keyboardist was known as “The Madman of Rock ’n’ Roll” and said his childhood hero was madcap bandleader Spike Jones.

Long after the group’s heyday, Revere kept the group going on the oldies circuit as the joking emcee who sustained both the catalog and the group’s spiffy Revolutionary War attire.

“I never stopped doing the ’60s,” he once told the Review-Journal. And for a few years on the casino circuit, “I had it all to myself.”

Northern Nevada will especially miss Revere, who died from cancer in October at age 76. He was based there for years and opened his nightclub Paul Revere’s Kicks in Reno in 1988.

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.