How did the Novas form originally?
We were all [high school class of] of 1968. I went to a different school (from the other band members), but I was introduced by a classmate of mine who was their original bass player, Mike Mullen. He had been forced to quit because he was also a great football player, and his parents wanted him to focus on that. It was before the Beatles came out; most of us had been playing Beach Boys, classic R&B. I was playing surf music. But once they did, we were like, ‘OK, now I get it. I see where we need to go with this.” And we started growing our hair long. How did you come up with your band name? It existed before I joined the band, but it’s been explained to me over the years as having been chosen because a nova in astronomy is an exploding star. I guess that makes sense. What are The Novas’ musical influences? Well, I guess as a band I’d have to say the Beatles, the Byrds, the Hollies, Buffalo Springfield — stuff that had a lot of harmony to it, that had melody and well-crafted songmanshi
