Ronald Koal And The Trillionaires
- Drew Layman
- 57 minutes ago
- 12 min read
Columbus has never really had a consensus band. You know, a band that rises above genre, musical cliques and niche tastes to be at least respected, if not beloved, by the musical community. But Columbus has never had a frontman like Ronald Koal. The improbability of a makeup-clad, stage-jumping musical chameleon like Koal emerging from the relatively staid Midwest culture is remarkable enough. That his band, The Trillionaires, became the closest thing Columbus has ever had to a consensus band is even more remarkable. And yet it happened. There has probably never been a Columbus musician more widely regarded as a sure-fire rock star than Ronald Koal. Although that destiny never panned out, Koal's impact on the Columbus music community is still deeply felt today.
No Other Records – NO-3
1982
Born Ronald Kinzer Gooslin, Jr. in 1958, Koal began writing songs while a student at Bexley High School. He graduated in 1977 and by 1979 was booking gigs for a duo with Steve Hunter billed as Kid Koal. From the outset, Koal was an individualist. He rejected labels and did not want to be pigeonholed. His look and music were constantly evolving. He was an engaging frontman the likes of which hasn't sprung from Columbus before or since.
The duo version of Kid Koal was brief, but a version of “The Letter” was captured in a public-access video. It has been somewhat lost to the mists of time, but by April 1980 the nucleus of the original Trillionaires had coalesced as Kid Koal: Matt Newman on guitar, Pete Linzell on sax, Jimmy Castoe on drums. When Mike Valentine joined on bass, the classic Trills lineup was set. They weren't billed as the Trillionaires until December of 1980. People think of the post-duo lineups of Kid Koal as the Trillionaires, and for all intents and purposes they were.
During an early run for the full band at Mr. Brown's Descent in May 1980, Frank Zappa showed up while in town for a Veterans Memorial Auditorium gig. Zappa, by all accounts, was impressed.
“The second time we played out as a band, Frank Zappa saw us,” Koal told the Cleveland Scene in 1982. “He came backstage and said, ‘Son, you better get to New York. You make David Bowie look like he doesn't know what he's doing.’ That pretty much filled my ego for a year.”
Things progressed quickly from there. After seeing Kid Koal at the 1979 Rock Against Racism show on the Ohio State oval, Darryl and Ro-z Mendelson—of Monkey's Retreat and ComFest fame—became the band's first managers. In January 1981, they came in second at Crazy Mama's New Wave Battle of the Bands, before tying Willie Phoenix's band The Buttons for Best New Wave Band at the first, and possibly last, annual Virgo Awards, one of several Columbus music awards shows that never seem to gain traction. Pete Linzell promptly lit the award certificate on fire and was kicked out of the event.
By April, the Trillionaires opened for U2 at the Agora, receiving a more favorable review in The Dispatch than the headliners, who apparently played a very short set. Mark Moormann and Curt Schieber, co-owners of Schoolkids Records, were enthusiastic about the band, signing them as the tent pole for their No Other Records startup label. Very quickly, the band was headlining the Agora themselves.
The Trillionaires were moving fast, but the pace was about to become almost absurd.
In July 1981, they released their What A Bargain! EP and made a trip to New York City. Max's Kansas City. CBGB's. Heady stuff. But the final gig of the New York trip was a troubling omen, in retrospect.
Shortly before Darryl Mendelson's passing in August 2023, he and Ro-z told the story for the Local Waste podcast. The band had rented a venue called Chase Park, and Mendelson had gone through his contacts in the music business trying to fill the room with people who might help the Trillionaires. Ronald, however, wasn't happy.
“I went through all these books of people in the music business and stuff, and just invited anybody that could, to attend the show,” Mendelson recalled. “But Ronald freaked out a little bit.”
Mendelson suspected maybe Koal had been awake the entire trip, but somebody in the audience was heckling Ronald, and Koal didn't handle it well. He apparently didn't recognize the significance of the people Mendelson had invited.
“They just look like poor schmoes like everybody else,” Mendelson said. “You couldn't tell the importance that these people had, you know, and Ronald didn't know who they were.” Soon after they returned to Columbus, Koal fired the Mendelsons. It wouldn't be the last high-profile opportunity that went sideways for Koal.
With the Mendelsons' blessing, Koal hired Gabor Klein as the Trillionaires' next manager. I recently had the opportunity to talk with Gabor over Zoom. (Full disclosure: Gabor managed my wife Elisa in the '90s.)
Klein came to Columbus in 1976 after a somewhat circuitous journey from Hungary, through Cleveland, New York, Jerusalem and Boston. He became involved with the Columbus arts community and ComFest, and eventually decided he wanted to manage bands. A trip to a JazzTimes conference introduced him to violinist Michal Urbaniak and, through him, to Inner City Records founder Irv Kratka. Before long, Klein was managing jazz musicians and finding himself in rooms with people like Dizzy Gillespie, Ahmet Ertegun, Nesuhi Ertegun and Ron Carter.
“Next thing I know, I'm with Irv, with Dizzy Gillespie, with Ahmet Ertegun, with Nesuhi Ertegun, Ron Carter, the bass player,” Klein recalled. “All these incredible people. I'm sitting in the Blue Note with them playing and we're eating steak.”
He came back to Columbus with national connections and began booking national bands into Oldfield's on Fourth Street. He'd seen Ronald Koal at Mr. Brown's Descent.
“I was blown away,” Klein said. It wasn't long before Gabor was managing the Trillionaires.
After celebrating their one-year anniversary with a weekend party at the Agora and Zachariah's Red-Eye Saloon, the Trillionaires were ready to record a full length. The band recorded at Fifth Floor Studios in Cincinnati in November 1981. Curt Schieber and Mark Moorman helped finance the project.
The choice of Cincinnati wasn't entirely random. Bootsy Collins was recording his The One Giveth, The Count Taketh Away album at Fifth Floor at that time, and Klein remembers that connection helping bring the Trillionaires there. The two artists shared the services of Fifth Floor engineer Gary Platt, resulting in some very late nights.
The band made repeated trips down from Columbus, sometimes working until the early morning hours. “We would record till midnight,” Klein said. “And then, of course, we would drive home in the middle of the night.”
The recording sessions took only a couple weeks, but the gig schedule did not ease up. In October 1981, just before the sessions, the Trillionaires were playing the Agora, Zachariah's, Mr. Brown's and the Valley Dale Ballroom. In November they recorded the LP while continuing to perform, including an opening slot for George Thorogood and the Destroyers at the Agora on November 13. They played Bogart's in Cincinnati less than two weeks later, then the Pop Shop (in the basement of Cleveland's Agora), Zach's, Shipley's in Cincy, Ruby Tuesday and Peabody's Cafe (Cleveland) before the year was out.
The album was mixed at Fifth Floor in February 1982. Two additional tracks were recorded at the Recording Workshop in Chillicothe in March and mixed there in April.
And they kept playing.
A lot.
January included the Cleveland Agora and an opening slot for Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. March brought more Cleveland dates, including the Agora and Pirate's Cove. April and May were filled with appearances at the Agora, Mr. Brown's, Ruby Tuesday and the Phantasy. In June they were still playing nearly every weekend while preparing for the album's release. First, they released the "Destination Zero" single.
Klein says the band's work ethic is something that has been obscured by the mythology surrounding Ronald Koal. “They rehearsed four days a week and played three days a week and had jobs,” he said. “They worked their asses off.” The image of the Trillionaires that has survived can easily reduce them to Ronald's theatricality and the band's excesses.
“People think they were fuck-offs, but they weren't fuck-offs,” Klein said. “They had their problems. They had their issues.”
But they were also serious musicians. Klein remembers drummer Jimmy Castoe as a veteran almost from childhood, having played at the Newport (Agora) when he was just 14. Castoe is one of the most revered and influential drummers amongst Columbus musicians.
Gabor is particularly emphatic about saxophonist Pete Linzell. “Pete knew everything—everything,” Klein said. “Jazz, blues, psychedelic, surf music. I mean he was encyclopedic. The whole band was like that.” That broad musical knowledge is important to understanding the Trillionaires. They weren't simply a vehicle for a flamboyant singer. The musicians behind Koal had absorbed a wide range of American and British music, and Koal himself seemed determined to absorb everything that interested him.
Klein describes Koal this way:
“David Bowie was the voice, and Elvis Presley the look, and Frank Sinatra the cool, and it was a little bit of everything.”
Bowie's influence seems obvious, but Koal wasn't simply trying to imitate Bowie. Klein remembers him getting excited about an imported cassette by the Southern Death Cult, the English band that preceded The Cult. He loved Sinatra. He loved Elvis. And his visual presentation was something he consciously constructed.
Klein remembers Koal standing in front of a mirror while preparing for performances. “Ronald used to pose in front of the mirror so that he could see what facial expressions worked and what didn't.” The makeup, the clothes, the gestures, the facial expressions—they weren't incidental. Offstage, Klein says, Ronald was shy. Onstage, he was something else entirely.
“Ronald was brilliant. He was very smart. You could tell how smart he was by listening to his music. And, then, he was a sweetheart. He was shy. But when he hit the stage, he was not shy. He was all there and he was very professional.”
Ronald Koal And The Trillionaires was released in July 1982. By then, the band had already played a staggering number of shows. And Klein wasn't satisfied with the Trillionaires as a successful Columbus band. He was trying to get them signed. He began shopping the album to major labels. “Constantly,” he said.
There was reason to think the record might get them there.
The album holds up. It's eclectic, sure, but that was the band. None of the trappings of early-'80s production are to be found. Recorded independently, produced by the band with the aid of Gary Platt, and benefiting from the dry recording techniques Platt honed working in the funk world with the Ohio Players and Bootsy Collins, the album sounds better today than many contemporary major-label rock releases.
"We had tight drum booths, tight recording spaces and that's what it was all about. The whole vibe around the studio was really good," Platt told Truth In Rhythm about Fifth Floor in 2022. Although the Trillionaires were not funk, those techniques worked wonders on the album. Just listen to the low end on "Destination Zero," for an example.
This was a band carving their own path and not beholden to any style or expectation. Koal was driven by defying expectations. And while his stage antics couldn't be captured on vinyl, the chemistry of the group comes straight through. Don't sleep on the importance of Linzell's sultry sax runs to the Trillionaires' sound. Rather than calling attention to the inevitable Bowie comparisons, they give the album an off-kilter, art-house vibe reminiscent of an American Roxy Music, yet distinctly their own.
You need look no further than The Trillionaires to hear why Castoe earned the respect he has among musicians. Driving and musical his drumming is wondrous, never failing to serve the song. Just when you think you might have the band pegged, they throw in a surf rock instrumental ((Theme From) Girl World) to end side one. Occasionally, they'd play an all-instrumental opening set live. They weren't throwing stuff at the wall to see what would stick. They were living their voracious appetite for music.
The Trillionaires continued to push. By the fall of 1982, they would open for national acts one night and headline a Columbus club the next. In November alone they opened for the Psychedelic Furs at the Phantasy in Cleveland, Gary Numan at Bogart's in Cincinnati and Paul Carrack's Noise To Go, featuring Nick Lowe, at the Cleveland Agora on three consecutive nights.
There was a sense that something was supposed to happen. And then, imperceptibly at first, the momentum began to slip. Matt Newman left the band in late 1982 and was replaced by Todd Novak, who'd been playing in Cryin' Out Loud, kindred spirits and frequent openers for the Trillionaires.
On February 6, 1983, the band got a "bad dose of rock 'n' roll," as the Lantern put it, when the driver of their van fell asleep on the way home from a Detroit gig. "I was woken up at like four or five in the morning, and I had to drive an hour," Gabor said. "And to get to the hospital, I had to drive past the van. Which was in a culvert, on its side, completely wrecked."
The show must go on.
"And it did," Klein agreed. "I would ask them and they would say, yeah, we gotta play. We're broke, we need money. They played the next week, (Todd) in a cast."
In April 1983, Warner Cable's Qube set up shop at the Agora to film this lineup of the Trillionaires preforming. The gig was also professionally recorded, Klein remembers. "The Recording Workshop brought their board from the Recording Workshop. Jim McKell. In the upstairs dressing room at the Agora, we had a board. So, we split the main board. One of them was upstairs to another mixing board. And then that board was patched in to a video truck that was parked in the alley. And they recorded the whole concert with Warner Qube. That was broadcast on Warner Qube nationally."
The major-label deal hadn't materialized, but the band continued to push. The grind was starting to take a toll and bassist Mike Valentine was the next to leave. 20-year-old bass player Ben Pridgeon stepped in. The gigs kept coming, including an opening slot for Billy Idol at Vets Memorial in February 1984. The bloom was off the rose, though, and that particular gig received a dismal review in The Dispatch, though largely chalked up to the sound.
They continued working well into 1984, playing regularly at Ruby Tuesday and elsewhere, but the band broke up at the end of the year. There was plenty of music left for everyone in the band, though Koal's life was tragically cut short in 1993 at just 34 years old. But that's a story for another day. Save for occasional one-off reunions, The Trillionaires were done.
But Ronald Koal And The Trillionaires remains.
And listening to it now, knowing what happened afterward, it's almost impossible not to hear it as a record of unrealized potential. The Trillionaires wouldn't make the leap from Columbus phenomenon to national success, but they worked for it.
It's easy to reduce Koal now to the makeup, the stage antics, the drugs, the missed opportunities and the tragedy. Klein remembers him differently: brilliant, shy, hardworking and, when he hit the stage, completely committed. An artist surrounded by an encyclopedic band, and a performer who thought carefully about every gesture he made. A consummate professional.
And Ronald Koal And The Trillionaires is the document of that professionalism—a Columbus band working seven days a week, recording in Cincinnati, traveling to New York, courting the national record industry and playing to more than a thousand people at the Agora.
It didn't lead where everyone thought it would.
But for a brief period, there was every reason to believe it might.
Tracklist
A4 New Age
B4 Moondust
Companies, etc.
Recorded At – Fifth Floor Recording Studios
Mixed At – Fifth Floor Recording Studios
Recorded At – The Recording Workshop
Mastered At – JVC Cutting Center
Pressed By – Wakefield Manufacturing – 40377
Phonographic Copyright ℗ – No Other Records, Inc.
Copyright © – Newgoozeo Tunes
Published By – Newgoozeo Tunes
Credits
Lead Vocals, Backing Vocals, Guitar (track: B5) – Ronald Koal
Guitar – Matt Newman
Tenor Saxophone, Guitar – Pete Linzell a.k.a. Linzeo
Bass – Mike Valentine
Drums, Percussion – James Castoe
Arranged By – Ronald Koal And The Trillionaires
Lyrics By – Ronald Koal
Executive-Producer – Curtis Schieber, Mark Moormann
Producer – Ronald Koal And The Trillionaires
Associate Producer, Engineer – Plattski
Assisted By – Bob Craig
Assisted In Mixing – Jeff Reynolds, Jerry Studenka
Mastered By – Ron Lewter
Engineer – Jim McKell (tracks: A4, B5)
Management – Gabor Klein
Design – Peetie King
Photography By – Randy Schieber
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