YONGSAN LEGACY Foreign 'Devil' recalls Itaewon's music scene in 1969-70
Larry Tressler, third from right, performs with soul band the Devils at the Lucky Club in Itaewon. Courtesy of Larry Tressler
When Larry Tressler arrived in Korea in 1968, he could hardly have imagined what the next 20 months of military service had in store for him.
Having previously worked as an audio engineer at a TV station in Cleveland, Ohio, he was assigned to be a news photographer for the 8th Army Public Affairs Office on Yongsan Garrison. In this capacity he “took hundreds of pictures of visiting dignitaries” with U.N. Commander Charles Bonesteel, whom he would strike up conversations with when no one was looking.
He also became scoutmaster of Boy Scout Troop 80, whom he once took on a four-day, 50-kilometer hike through the Korean countryside. As they were mostly foreign kids based in Yongsan Garrison, they attended a jamboree in the Philippines, since “no Korean troop could go…" he told The Korea Times. "We represented Korea and flew the Korea flag in our campsite. It confused a lot of other campers.”
But what proved most memorable was a discovery he made in Itaewon.
Itaewon at the time had few stores or restaurants and was centered around a cluster of GI clubs on the hill behind the fire station, which was usually crawling with GIs, “depending on the time of the month. It was most crowded after pay day.”
Larry Tressler, right, poses with other photographers of the 8th Army Public Affairs Office. Courtesy of Larry Tressler
Women working in small buildings lining the hill would call out to passersby, inviting them in for a good time, while “dive bars” like the Playboy Club, 007 Club and Lucky Club also attracted soldiers with cheap beer and bands that played the latest American hit songs.
Unlike the others, Lucky Club was at the top of the hill in 1968, though the next year it moved into a new building at the bottom of the hill. “The owner hated being up there because after they’d drunk too much, the soldiers found it hard to get up the hill,” Tressler said.
When Tressler walked into the club for the first time, he was impressed by the band on stage, a soul band called the Devils.
“The first time I heard them perform, I knew they were something special. Something put them above all the other Korean bands I had heard. Not only were they excellent musicians, their diction of all the English words of the lyrics was excellent. Other bands just phonetically sang the lyrics, but these guys sang with their hearts like they meant every word. That intrigued me," he said. "I struck up a conversation with them one evening during their performance break. I told them that I was in a band back in the States and I thought they were really good. Maybe it was a mutual love of good music, but we hit it off right away. I returned to the club nightly for many weeks having discussions, and just getting to know them.”
He had many opportunities to see them, as the band was playing there seven days a week, which allowed them to practice, get better and try new material, as he put it. "Playing every night in Itaewon was the band’s ‘bread and butter.’ Then, usually on weekends and afternoons, they could get real, legit gigs, hoping to get discovered and climb the ladder to success,” he said.
The Devils perform at the Playboy Club, 1968. Courtesy of Larry Tressler
One evening, the band’s guitarist, Kim Myung-gil, asked him if he was free that weekend to help them transcribe lyrics from some American records. “For two days, we sat in a small, one-room apartment, playing albums one phrase at a time, over and over, while I scribbled the words on sheets of paper,” a task made more challenging by the low quality of the bootleg records they were using.
“After writing them down, we would review the songs word by word. They not only wanted to know what the words were, but exactly what every phrase meant," he explained. "They wanted to experience the emotions behind the words.” This, as he put it, was the “secret sauce” that allowed the band to convey “real, authentic emotion” when they sang.
As time went on, he and the band members became close friends, and before long they invited him onstage to sing a song with them, which soon “expanded into a couple songs, then joining them on stage every night. They eventually included me when they purchased new band costumes,” which “meant a lot to me. It said that I was an official Devil. Each set we performed started out with our musical intro of ‘We are Devils… Soul-brothers.’”
At that time the Devils were the house band at Lucky Club, but it was not the first time the club had hosted an American singer. Gary Lewis, son of comedian Jerry Lewis and former leader of the band The Playboys, who’d had a string of hits in the mid-1960s, had formed a band and played at Lucky Club during the years he spent in Korea after being drafted in 1967.
Unlike most Korean bands that performed for U.S. soldiers at this time, the Devils played mostly soul and Motown music. As a result, they drew an audience that Tressler figured was “60 percent white, 40 percent black.” White soldiers liked Motown because it was “the biggest thing around” at the time, but for Black soldiers, they were particularly drawn to the Devils because they “couldn’t get enough of it” in Korea “because it really wasn’t on AFKN,” the U.S. Armed Forces radio station, which played only “bubblegum and pop music.”
Though racial tensions were rising at this time among U.S. soldiers in Korea, this wasn’t a problem in the clubs the Devils played. “I think we took care of it because of our Motown sound,” of which he said, “It’s happy music. Everybody loves it, and it brings people together.”
As he remembers it, “We would practice in the Itaewon clubs seven nights a week from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m.,” and then he would have to make his way back to base before the midnight curfew. To get around this, at one point he spent a month or two living at Lucky Hotel, in the same building as Lucky Club, because he thought “it would be kind of cool, instead of making this walk every night, to just have a room upstairs. Then I could just walk down, or any time one of the guys wanted to come by and ask a question or transcribe songs, we could do that.”
A question he was once asked was whether he knew anything about a new piece of tech called a wah-wah pedal. “I didn’t," he admitted. "So in that era, where did anyone go to find information on a new product? The Sears-Roebuck catalog, of course. We found one, which we immediately ordered. And within a few weeks, we were breaking ground with an additional brand-new sound.”
As time went by, the band’s reputation grew, so much so that in November 1969 it managed to score an appearance on the first episode of MBC’s new youth-oriented music show, “Young Rhythm.” In the spring of 1970 the band played at OB’s Cabin, a popular three-floor club in Myeong-dong, where it was “very hard to get an invitation to perform.”
The Devils perform at OB’s Cabin, 1970. Courtesy of Larry Tressler
In June 1970 they performed, along with dozens of other bands, at the three-day “‘70 Soul Jazz Carnival” at Citizens Hall in Gwanghwamun, where they were expected to play two songs and then remain until the end of the hours-long show when every performer gathered on stage for a final song. At the time, the Devils were the house band at the Playboy Club in Itaewon. “We could not find a band to cover for us every night at the Playboy Club,” so on those nights they had to “escape from Citizens Hall and get back to Itaewon for a couple of sets” and then “rush right back to Citizens Hall for the finale.”
They also played at the second Playboy Cup band competition held at Seoul Citizens Hall in July 1970, where they performed with home-made pyrotechnics and wore skeleton costumes under black lights. Out of 12 bands competing, they won the bronze prize (behind He6 and Last Chance), while the Devils’ singer, Yeon Seok-won, won the prize for best singer.
The Devils perform with pyrotechnics at the 1970 Playboy Cup competition. Courtesy of Larry Tressler
Tressler was able to surprise Korean audiences by singing Korean songs like "Arirang" to a rock beat. “After their initial amazement, the audience would always start clapping in rhythm with the beat,” he said. To achieve this, his bandmates drilled him so that he got the pronunciation right. “I’d try to say it and they’d say ‘No, no, that's not right. Say it this way.’ And I’d try it. ‘No!’ It was frustrating. But I got it.”
During his interview with The Korea Times, Tressler mentioned that he used to sing another song, one by a girl group. When asked if it was the Pearl Sisters, who were hugely popular at the time, he replied, “Maybe,” and then quietly said “Meolli deonna ga…” before trailing off with a sheepish look. When asked if it was their hit, “Nima,” he replied “Yes! That’s it!” Even after 50 years, he still remembered some of the words.
In the late summer of 1970, Tressler returned to the U.S., which he remembered as “a sad time because I was leaving my friends and all the Korean traditions and customs that the guys exposed me to.”
The Devils went on to record several albums in the 1970s, many of which included photos taken by Tressler in their liner notes, but he remained unaware of this for decades because there was “no way to learn any news about a little rock 'n' roll band in Korea.”
Access to the internet proved of little help until 2010, when he learned about the 2008 film “Go Go 70s,” which was based loosely on the Devils. After years of countless email inquiries, he finally contacted a friend of Devils guitarist Kim Myung-gil — only to learn that he had passed away six months prior, in May 2020. “I cried a lot that day knowing that I was so close to finding him,” he said.
Larry Tressler poses with his copies of the Devils’ first two LPs at his home in Orlando, Florida, in this photo taken recently. Courtesy of Larry Tressler
Now retired and living in Orlando, Florida, Tressler was able to visit Korea with his wife in October as part of the Korean government’s Revisit Korea Program for Korea Defense Veterans.
Remembering his time in Korea, he said, “I sometimes watch the movie ‘Go-Go 70s’... every time I hear ‘We are Devils… Soul Brothers,’ my eyes shed a tear of happiness. Without a doubt, those were some of the best years of my life.”
Tressler runs a Facebook group hoping to share memories about the Devils and reconnect with people he has lost touch with. He also welcomes long-lost friends to email tresslerlarry@yahoo.com to reconnect with him.
Matt VanVolkenburg has a master's degree in Korean studies from the University of Washington. He is the blogger behind populargusts.blogspot.kr, and co-author of "Called by Another Name: A Memoir of the Gwangju Uprising."