Biography
From Denver, Colorado, this outfit started out as a fine punk band releasing four 45s for Tower. Amongst these are the frantic garage-punker You’ll Come Back, plus excellent covers of I’m All Right and Baby, Please Don’t Go. The flip to their fourth 45 was also a cover of The Guilloteens’ folk-rocker.
The Moonrakers evolved out of surf act The Surfin’ Classics, when vocalist/guitarist Doug Dolph was replaced by Denny Flannigan. As The Surfin’ Classics, they’d performed a lot of Beach Boys/Ventures material, but their name change came about when they got matched in a Battle of The Bands with Colorado’s Astronauts and needed a more ‘with-it’ name. Bob MacVittie thus renamed themselves after the book he was reading at the time, Ian Fleming’s novel “Moonraker”.
The band obtained their deal with Tower through their manager Roger Christian, a well-known L.A. disc jockey. Christian (who co-wrote Little Deuce Coupe and Don’t Worry Baby with Brian Wilson), had ‘connections’… The Moonrakers thus got to open for many major groups in Denver, including The Dave Clark Five, the Righteous Brothers and Sonny and Cher. The even got to meet The Beatles and Bill Haley and The Comets when they played for 50,000 screaming fans at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, in the Foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
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