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Wayne McNatt

Profile Updated: October 5, 2019
Residing In:
Marietta, GA USA
Homepage:
Occupation:
Recording Artist, Uber Driver
Children:
Marlon, born 1983
Marshall, born 1987
Cell Phone:

404-219-5335

Comments:

My music career got off to a quick start in 1968 while still at Grady High, playing with recording artists like Billy Joe Royal(Down In The Boondocks), Rufus Thomas(Walking The Dog), Roy Head(Treat Her Right), Roy Orbison(Pretty Woman), and Lou Christie(Lightning Strikes Again). It was pretty exciting time for a young teenager ...... I was playing with musicians who were 10 yrs older than I was.

Moved to L.A. in 1974 and worked with a band called "Tycoon" and we secured a recording contract with Mike Curb(Curb Records), although it never really developed into anything.

Came back to Atlanta in '78 to go on tour with Capitol recording artist Ellen McIlwaine. Again, was exciting ........ got to play all the important clubs around the country, but it led us nowhere, so that group disbanded after 4 or 5 months.

As that venture fell apart, I grew tired of backing other artists so I started a group of my own which evolved into "THE PRODUCERS". Around this time, I somehow acquired the pseudonym 'Wayne Famous', which stuck, and people still call me by that name.

By 1980 we had attracted the attention of Tom Werman(producer at CBS/Epic Records), who had produced artists like Ted Nugent, Cheap Trick, Mother's Finest, etc.

We recorded our first album, self titled "The Producers" and released it in the spring of '81. By August '81, this new channel called MTV came into being, and within a month, we were getting airplay, which quickly escalated into 'heavy rotation', and the group was off and running!

By '82, we released our 2nd album entitled "You Make The Heat" with the single "She Sheila" and suddenly we were playing to crowds of 5 to 10,000. That led to us playing on the 2nd Annual MTV New Year's Eve Ball featuring Duran Duran, The Producers, and A Flock Of Seagulls.

In '85, we recorded a third album on our own label entitled "Run For Your Life" and in '88, a fourth album for MCA Records called ''Coelacanth"

So, between 1980 and 1990, we had toured the U.S., Canada, and all through the Carribean with U2, R.E.M., Toto, The Tubes, Cheap Trick, Joan Jett, The Go Go's, Billy Idol, The Romantics, The Dixie Dregs, Mother's Finest, Hall and Oates, Huey Lewis, Todd Rundgren, A Flock Of Seagulls, Rick Springfield, and on and on.

By 1990, things began to fizzle out, and we began a slow drift into oblivion, but while it lasted, quite a run it was!!

I met a lot of important and famous people and had a hell of a lot of fun! Unfortunately, as it is with a lot of artists, a lot of money was made, but most of it ended up in the pockets of our lawyers, managers, agents and so on, without a lot left over for us.

The Producers are still together after all these years(the same four original members), and we still occasionally go out and play festivals and the like, and I have adjusted to all that. For the last 20 or so years, I have driven a taxi to pay bills ......... and I still do session work and occasional composer and sound effects jobs.

Along the way, came two great kids, Marlon, a Delta pilot, and Marshall, still a student deciding what he wants to do. Divorced twice ........ that's enough for me, and our family is all excited because my 2nd cousin, Alan Gilbert, just took over the reins as conductor for the New York Philharmonic, so at least someone in the family is still doin' it!!

Here’s an update, as of October 5, 2019:
My son Marlon, still a Delta pilot, got married last October, and with his beautiful wife Katie, are settled in Dubuque Iowa, now trying to have babies.
My son Marshall finished school and is is in management for Macy’s out in Santa Rosa, California and is a sports maniac. He is a confirmed Californian - we may never get him back to Georgia. He’s still single but has come close a couple of times.
I’m remain with the Producers and suppose we’ll continue until one of us dies. I also have a band called Hammerhead and we play songs that we always wanted to play, over the years but, for some reason never did.
Also, I pay in a project band called ‘STAX to the MAX’ which honors all the incredible music that came out of Memphis (my birth home) and Muscle Shoals. That’s gonna be a special event kind of band that’ll play at music festivals and the like.
Cousin Alan Gilbert finished out his tenure as conductor in New York and is now concentrating on his passion for the opera.

School Story:

Assorted School Memories


Grammar School:

The 1st Grade Easter Egg hunt on the front lawn of Inman, with us all running around with construction paper bunny ears .............. the terrifying visual of Mrs
Merle screaming at and dragging some poor 1st grader down the hall to Mrs Jones
office ................. every year at the Inman Holiday Chorus Program, at least one kid
would faint and fall off the risers from the heat of those multi-colored lights ...............paper sales, all the bundles tied with string, on Clemont Street
behind the playground ..........what was that surface on the playground .....it was like
white sand but it was nearly as hard as concrete .......taking swimming lessons at

the Piedmont Park Swimming Pool ...... on the lake side of the pool.......... Jimmy Pickering got hit by a car on a rainy morning at the 8th Street
bus stop right in front of us .......... thank god he wasn't hurt too bad .......... but I
always looked before crossing the street after that ................... Mrs Lovett could hit a
softball farther than any of the boys ......... and boy do I know my times tables she
would make me do every time I acted up in class! Doing my times tables became

such a routine punishment, that I would build up a reserve of spare copies, so I
wouldn't be too late for Gray-Y football practice after school. I would pretend I was
working on them for around 15 minutes, then march up and hand her the
previously done copy ......... she always seemed confused that I could seemingly do
them so fast!

And last but not least, my favorite substitute teacher in grammar school was Mrs.
Roberts, because you didn't have to do any work all day, 'cause she would take all
day to tell the story of the San Francisco Fire and Earthquake in 1906 when she
was a little girl ............ I think I must have heard that story maybe 8 or 10 times over
the years!


High School:

My earliest memory of Grady was darkness and the dank smell of the long 8th
street wing, which was a terrifying place to be for a sub-freshman .......... some of the
seniors would pick on you down there 'cause it was the longest distance from Mr
Derthicks office ............... also some of my favorite memories come from the band
room and the album we recorded the year Mr McLendon took over after Mr Seitz

retired ............. of course the Pep Rallies in the gym with Mr Derthick's rousing
charisma as cheer leader-in-chief .............. and the day Linda Mochelli showed up
late, halfway through the pep rally, drug a chair all the way across the gym floor,
and set it down right smack in the middle, all by herself, whilst Chuck Sadtler and
Andy Baldwin led the band in a rousing version of 'The Stripper' ! Anybody

remember the exchange student we had for a year, from Amsterdam? Can't
remember the spelling but his name was John deJohn, or phonetically something
like that ......... nice guy .......... always wondered whatever happened to him.
I had Mr Wills for homeroom, and he was mostly disgusted with me, cause I was
frequently falling asleep after having been up playing music late the night

before ......... around 10th grade some of the boys(myself included) somehow
ended up in Mrs Kemp's home economics class ......... I guess for that era ....... it was
pretty gay ............. anyways we always got tickled when she would start in on the
sex-education stuff ........ she was always proud of how frank she would be on the
subject, and enjoyed making some of the kids blush .........Coach Shupe would

throw that ol hard, heavy chalk at your head if you talked in his class.......... the
smoking wall, off to the side of the gym ............ I got busted one day ......Coach
Maupin caught me smoking over there just after B-team football practice ............ the
smile on Caye Thomason's face when she would drop a mouse in with her Boa

and watch our reactions to mother-nature in action .......... the day Roy ..... or was it
Troy Mercer got in a fight outside the cafeteria with a new eighth-grader nobody
knew, and the eighth grader won by pulling his eye out of the socket ...... what a
shocker ................. HennyPenny................................................coach Skelton's spit
cup.......which he would leave laying around various places in the gym.......you

didn't want to trip over that one......... NASTY!!!! ......... the basketball game that
ended with the emptying of both stands in a huge on the court fight ......... the name
of the school escapes me ........ oh yes, Mr Overton gave me the distinction of being
the 1st student that he had ever thrown out of his class in his entire career .......
seems I was playing with some chemicals and inadvertently mixed sulfuric acid
(strongest acid) with sodium hydroxide(strongest base) and ka-blammmmm ...... it
exploded and blew all the way up and stained the ceiling tile.

We had the prettiest bunch of girls at Grady ........ I had many crushes ........... and what a smart bunch we were.............. lotsa cool students ...........not too many dummies.............. I consider myself lucky to be a part of such a great group of students .........great teachers, too........... my favorite was Mrs Adams(English).......she inspired you by telling you WHY and HOW you were gonna use all this stuff later in life......... the talent shows were always good ....... I specifically remember being stunned at how incredible Benny Pirkle was at the piano ........ and of course Kathy Jackson! When Kathy sang 'People' it was instantly "a star is born"! Everybody was just totally blown away ......... and I'm most proud of how we all handled racial integration, which was sort of a new thing for schools, back in the 60's, and how we all loved and admired each other, and none of it was ever a big deal, like it sometimes is, even now, 40 years later. I think we got it pretty right, fellow Grey Knights or was it Gray Knights?



P.S. Here's one that only a few will remember ...... to name a few: Barry Weiner, Barry Zimmerman, Jeff Baumerind, Bobby Glustrom, Reb Rummel, Moss Robertson........................ do you know where I'm going with this?


One fateful day, Coach Verbinski got really really REALLY MAD during B-team basketball practice over at the girls gym. I don't remember who or what he was mad about, but he grabbed the basketball and slammed it down so hard on the court, that it went up, hit the ceiling, came down and hit the floor and bounced back up to within 3 feet of hitting the ceiling again. We all knew this was bad but we had no idea just how bad........... he took us out to the old practice field(not the field you see today ......the old field, before they cut it in half) and made us start with 8 laps around the field ................ then he took us into the boys gym and made us run up and down each of the 4 stairscases on both sides of the gym stands........ that would be one lap ............ but he made us do many many laps ......... don't want to embellish too much, but it was no less than 35 complete laps .......... but I want to say it was closer to 60 or 70 full laps ........... anyways, by the time he allowed us to stop, nobody had any legs left ........... but wait, that wasn't the end of it, yet ............ then we had to drag our rubber legs back to the girls gym, where one at a time, he would roll the ball as fast as he could from one end of the court to the other, and you had to not only chase it down with your rubber legs, but pick it up and do a successful lay-up shot. If the ball didn't go in, you had to run all the way back to Verbinski, and do it again and again 'til you got the lay-up in the basket! I think I missed it twice before I finally got one in.

Closest near-death experience I think I ever had.

Wayne's Latest Interactions

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Wayne McNatt updated profile. View.
Oct 05, 2019 at 1:41 PM
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Posted: Dec 17, 2013 at 12:07 AM
Marlon - age 25
Posted: Dec 17, 2013 at 12:07 AM
Marshall - age 22
Posted: Dec 17, 2013 at 12:07 AM
Me - age approx 33 'back in the day'
Posted: Dec 17, 2013 at 12:07 AM
Me - maybe 2 yrs ago - Oh, the ravages of time!


agape