It isn't surprising to learn that Lloyd Price's 1959 hit Personality is Doug Bennett's personal anthem. That word personality explains a lot about the outrageous Mr. Bennett and his group Doug and the Slugs.

It explains why Doug abandoned a lucrative career in commercial art and advertising to venture into the risky world of rock and roll. It explains why the band is now climbing to the top on a string of hit singles from the highly successful album Music for the Hard of Thinking. Most of all, it explains how a man who looks like Leave It To Beaver's Lumpy Rutherford can become a rock star.

Well, he's not quite so lumpy now. Doug lost 35 pounds since Christmas thanks to a miracle diet of his own invention.

"I gave up food completely. I survived on a diet of booze and tomato soup," he jokes, quickly adding that his remarkable reduction was really the result of simple moderation. "I just stop eating when I'm full now."

Even without the extra pounds, Doug is still too big for any stage. He often abandons it in the course of his frantic shows to serenade, goad, mock and occasionally molest members of his audience.

And that audience is growing as the masses are drawn by hits like Who Knows How to Make Love Stay, Making' It Work, Nobody But Me, Too Bad and Real Enough.

The larger audience means playing larger venues,which means Doug has more space to cover.

"It's tougher, but it's more of a joy," he says. The band prefers playing large outdoor concerts to slugging it out on the arena circuit.

"You can get away with doing the outdoor things rather than the hockey arenas," Doug says, "because everyone goes there with a Stephen Leacock sort of feeling."

It's hard to believe that this man who now performs the 1980's equivalent of the turn-of-the-century bandshell show was doing advertising and layout for newspapers as recently as 1978.

He decided to sing rock and roll because he was bored with what he calls "the mellow, faceless rock in the 1970s." Doug and the Slugs set out to play music with the same sense of personality that Doug found in the pop of the early 1960s.

Of course, many other bands felt the same way at the time and that has led to a radio situation that pleases Doug.

"I'm excited that things are starting to interest my ear again," he says.

"Something we've always tried to do is put a little personality into what we do."

Now the personality one finds in Doug and the Slugs is quite unlike those of the average super-macho rock personalities.

The video for Makin' It Work leaves no doubt about what part of his anatomy Doug is referring to when he sings "Makin it works takes a little longer." It is unlikely that a Rod Stewart or a Robert Plant would be able to cope with the suggestion of impotence that Doug gleefully perpetuates about himself.

"I have as strong an image as anyone else," he contends, "but it's an image I can have fun with and I can live with."

It was an image that American Pay-TV network MTV refused to live with. The Makin' It Work video was banned from the station.

"MTV didn't go for it because they're having a lot of pressure put on them," Doug explains. He strongly denies, however, that the video is in any way obscene. His intention was to make a sex farce along the lines of a Carry-On comedy.

Despite this minor setback with the censors, Doug's career as a director of videos is booming. Along with Makin' It Work, Doug has directed videos for Too Bad, Real Enough and Who Knows How to Make Love Stay. In the last, the band is seen travelling through a surrealistic series of TV sitcom introductions including The Beverly Hillbillies, Gillian's Island and Love Boat.

In addition to his video work with the Slugs, Doug has worked with Trooper and Headpins.

"I've always had an interest in that sort of thing," says Doug. He says his dream would be to become "Cecil B. DeSlug" and direct a big budget feature with dancing girls and a million dollar set.

But it takes more than a video to create a personable hit song. Doug and the Slugs music has a unique personality all its own.

It is basically a blend of early rhythm and blues vocal harmonies with ska-reggae instrumentation. Of course, you have to take into account John Burton's occasional forays into metallic guitar blast, Simon Kendall's often pretty keyboard fills and the odd trace of funk in Steve Bosley's bubbly bass.

Doug regards the band as a single unit, rather than a bunch of anonymous players backing up his front man routine. Slowly the personalities of all the individual members are coming to the forefront.

Simon's vocals are featured prominently on She's Lookin' At Me, a comic duet of put-downs that caps off the Music For The Hard Of Thinking album. Doug says that another member of the band will step into the limelight on the next album.

The next album will be recorded in November and released in January. Until then Doug and the Slugs will be bring their wild act to concert halls all over the United States and Canada, so everyone will get the chance to catch the world's fastest moving slugs.

*Free Music Magazine, Vol. 1 No. 1 November 1983*

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