So you want to be a rock ’n’ roll star
Then listen now to what I say
Just get an electric guitar
And take some time and learn how to play
And when your hair’s combed right and your pants fit tight
It’s gonna be all right
So said the Byrds – specifically songwriters Jim McGuinn and Chris Hillman – back in 1967, and the formula still works pretty well to this day. The song has been covered many times since, often with altered lyrics, with the version of “So You Want to be a Rock ’n’ Roll Star” by Patti Smith Group in 1979 being perhaps the best known cover.
The lyrics are more than a little cynical – check the next to last line – and the fact is, no one has really discovered the secret formula. “So You Want to be a Rock ’n’ Roll Star” was written in the wake of the creation of The Monkees television show and the Monkees band, who became known by many as the Pre-Fab Four (the Beatles of course being the original Fab Four).
In truth, only Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork started out as musicians; Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz were actors (in fact, I remembered previously seeing Dolenz in a TV show called Circus Boy). However, by the time they went on tour in late 1966, all four members of the Monkees were accomplished musicians and put on as good a show as most American rock bands of that period; I saw them myself (I believe in Greensboro, NC), and I enjoyed the show – probably the first major rock concert that I attended.
* * *
Anyway, as difficult as it is to get your foot in the door – land that first recording contract, or get that first hit single – keeping at it is even tougher. Take Buffalo Springfield for instance; they were a mid-1960’s folk-rock band that was loaded with talent. The band took their quizzical name from the side of a steamroller; released three fine albums and a topical hit single that still gets a lot of radio play, “For What it’s Worth” (another Stephen Stills song on Buffalo Springfield, their debut album, “Sit Down, I Think I Love You” was a hit for the Mojo Men in 1967); had numerous line-up changes; and ultimately broke up – all in the space of barely two years. I heard an interview on the radio one time with one of the bandmembers, Stephen Stills I think; they knew that they were part of a classic band, but for a variety of reasons, they could not keep it going. Stills was 21 when Buffalo Springfield formed and 23 when they broke up; clearly, he had a lot more rock and roll in him.
Now what?
* * *
The life of a rock band is analogous to people’s experiences with going to college. Sometimes you don’t get out of the first semester, other times the thing dies away after a couple of years. The average life of a successful rock band is probably the four or five years that it takes to get a degree. And occasionally, one is able to, ahem, stay in academia for a lifetime – witness the Rolling Stones, Golden Earring, and KISS.
Unbeknownst to most of us, some bands stayed together for decades: Status Quo is known in America only for their 1967 psychedelic hit “Pictures of Matchstick Men”; but over the course of their career, they have released 60 songs that charted in the U.K. (the most recent in 2010) – more than any other rock group – and 23 of these were Top 10 hits. One of my long-time favorites, the Dutch band Shocking Blue released a huge hit in 1970, “Venus”. Featuring striking lead singer Mariska Veres (though she was not an original member), the band released 25 singles and 11 albums, though I had to go to Europe to find their albums.
Later, the rock bands get back together, much as colleges have reunions.
* * *
Buffalo Springfield started with a chance meeting of Stephen Stills and Neil Young; later, Stills and his friend Richie Furay were driving along Sunset Boulevard in L.A. and spotted a hearse. Stills was sure that it was Young’s, and sure enough, it was. Neil Young had another Canadian in the hearse as a passenger: Bruce Palmer. These four formed the band with drummer Dewey Martin.
As is often true, there were tensions in the band; Stephen Stills and Neil Young never really got along, and that has apparently continued to the present day. Young was in and out of the band several times over their short life, and Bruce Palmer was fighting deportation back to Canada. By the time that their final album, Last Time Around was released – back when bands announced that sort of thing – Jim Messina was part of the line-up. One of Neil Young’s first well-known songs, “I Am a Child” was on that album; but he really shone on the previous album, Buffalo Springfield Again with the opening cut “Mr. Soul”, “Expecting to Fly”, and the ambitious “Broken Arrow” (Young named his music publishing company after this song).
* * *
David Crosby had been a member of the Byrds but was forced out in late 1967 due to friction with others in the band. By early 1968, Stephen Stills was one of several musicians who began sailing with Crosby on his yacht and jamming with him. One of the first fruits of these sessions was the apocalyptic tale “Wooden Ships”, composed by Stills, Crosby, and Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane.
David Crosby met Graham Nash of the British Invasion band the Hollies when the Byrds toured England in 1966; when the Hollies came to L.A. in 1968, they reunited their acquaintance. At a party given by Nash’s then-girlfriend Joni Mitchell in July 1968, Stephen Stills and David Crosby performed a new Stills song called “You Don’t Have to Cry” with harmony vocals added by Graham Nash. The three realized that they had a unique chemistry, and Crosby, Stills & Nash was born.
As one of the few new bands, Crosby, Stills & Nash (Neil Young also played with them part of the time; the band was then called Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) was a hit at the 1969 Woodstock festival, including their performance of “Wooden Ships”. There was a renowned exchange between songs, where David Crosby notes that this is just their second gig, and then Stephen Stills says: “This is the second time we’ve ever played in front of people, man, we’re scared s--tless.”
Crosby, Stills & Nash wasn’t really as new as that quote seemed to indicate; the band had released their debut album Crosby, Stills & Nash in May 1969, three months before Woodstock, and the recording sessions began in June 1968. I had always thought that Neil Young was the man peeking out of the door on the back cover of Crosby, Stills & Nash, but it was actually their drummer Dallas Taylor. Young did join up for their next album, Déjà Vu; the album was released under the name Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (with drummer Dallas Taylor and bassist Greg Reeves also credited on the cover in smaller print).
Neil Young continued to record sporadically with the group; also, David Crosby and Graham Nash have released several albums with just the two of them.
Crosby, Stills, Nash and/or Young have released any number of cultural and counter-cultural touchstones over the years: “Ohio” (about the Kent State University shootings); “Woodstock” (written by Joni Mitchell based on what Graham Nash told her about the festival – Matthews’ Southern Comfort had a Number 1 hit in the U.K. with “Woodstock”); “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” (written about Judy Collins); “Teach Your Children” (featuring Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead on pedal steel guitar; the song actually made the country charts); “Helpless” (one of Neil Young’s loveliest songs); “Southern Man” (on Neil Young’s excellent solo album, After the Gold Rush, with Lynyrd Skynyrd good-naturedly answering the song in their hit “Sweet Home Alabama”); “Love the One You’re With” (first released on Stephen Stills’ debut solo album, Stephen Stills – live versions of “Southern Man” and “Love the One You’re With” appear on the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young double album 4 Way Street); etc.
* * *
One of the problems with creating new rock bands out of old ones is recording contracts: Just because a rock band breaks up doesn’t usually mean that the members of the band are no longer bound by them. You might have noticed over the years that even guest musicians playing on someone else’s album appear “courtesy of” another record company.
When Last Time Around was being wound up, Stephen Stills and Neil Young had already exited Buffalo Springfield; and Richie Furay (guitar and vocals) and Jim Messina (bass guitar) were about the only ones left. For the final track laid down by Buffalo Springfield, Furay and Messina were joined by Rusty Young (pedal steel guitar); he was a rarity in that time period in being one of the few steel guitarists who felt comfortable playing rock music. The three stuck together; at Young’s suggestion, they added Randy Meisner (bass guitar and vocals), who had been in a band called the Poor, and George Grantham (drums and vocals), who had been in a psychedelic folk/rock band called Boenzee Cryque with Rusty Young.
The band first began calling themselves Pogo, but Walt Kelly, the creator of the popular comic strip Pogo objected, so they switched to Poco. Poco became one of the earliest and most long-lived country-rock bands.
Several record companies were interested in signing the new act, but they hit a road block: Richie Furay and Jim Messina were still signed to Atlantic Records as part of Buffalo Springfield. Meanwhile, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were having the same problem getting signed. David Geffen, then a young talent scout, arranged for the recording contracts for Stephen Stills and Neil Young to be swapped for those of Richie Furay and Jim Messina, so that CSNY could be signed to Atlantic Records, and Poco could be signed to Epic Records.
* * *
Poco’s first album, Pickin’ up the Pieces is considered to be a classic of the country-rock genre, the leading sound emerging from Southern California in the 1970’s and into the 1980’s. But their internal problems began almost immediately: Randy Meisner played on the first album but was asked to leave the band after becoming angry at being left out of the final mixing and production of the tracks on the record. Poco went further than most in its acrimony: Although his instrumental contributions were left in, Meisner’s lead vocals were removed from the album (George Grantham sung new ones to take their place), and he was taken out of the cover painting and replaced with a dog.
After leaving the band, Randy Meisner played with Rick Nelson for a while and then joined another country-rock outfit that eventually dubbed themselves the Eagles. Jim Messina left not long after that and started a fruitful collaboration with Kenny Loggins as Loggins and Messina.
Richie Furay stayed with the band through their sixth album, Crazy Eyes (1973); the album made the Top 40, but with the lackluster sales of both albums and singles, even he was starting to get discouraged. Poco hung in there and hit something of a creative peak with Rose of Cimarron (1976); the title track, “Rose of Cimarron”, written by Rusty Young was covered by Emmylou Harris and was the de facto title track on her album Cimarron. Though only Rusty Young remained among the founding members, their 1978 album Legend was the band’s most successful, reaching #14 on the Billboard album charts and including two Top 20 singles, “Crazy Love” and “Heart of the Night”.
* * *
If I remember right, I saw a display at the local Record Bar showing Poco emerging from Buffalo Springfield; and Cactus growing out of another classic 1960’s band, Vanilla Fudge. VF had a well developed formula of covering a variety of hit songs in a slowed down, psychedelicized manner; their debut album, Vanilla Fudge (1967) was filled with them: the Supremes hit “You Keep Me Hanging On” (which is what got them signed in the first place to the Atlantic Records affiliate, Atco Records); two Beatles songs, “Ticket to Ride” and “Eleanor Rigby”; a Impressions classic “People Get Ready”; the Zombies song “She’s Not There”; and Sonny and Cher’s “Bang Bang”. Vanilla Fudge probably could not have kept this up for long no matter what, but they basically set themselves up for the so-called sophomore jinx with their second effort, a more textured and ambitious concept album constructed around another Sonny and Cher song (“The Beat Goes On”), called The Beat Goes On.
Vanilla Fudge had the good fortune to tour with Jimi Hendrix, was the opening act on several concerts on Cream’s last tour, and finally began touring with the brand-new Led Zeppelin opening for them. After hanging in there for several more albums (Sundazed Records has reissued four of them), the band broke up in early 1970.
* * *
Cactus was originally going to be the rhythm section of Vanilla Fudge – Tim Bogert (bass guitar) and Carmine Appice (drums) – coupled with guitar hero Jeff Beck and future superstar Rod Stewart. What a rock band that would have been also! Unfortunately, Beck had a bad motorcycle accident and was sidelined for 18 months. Instead, the line-up in Cactus was rounded out by Jim McCarty (guitar), formerly with Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, and singer Rusty Day from Ted Nugent’s early band Amboy Dukes.
The band’s first album, Cactus was one of the best hard rock albums of 1970. The album opens with a fierce version of the Mose Allison song “Parchman Farm” (about the notorious Mississippi State Penitentiary of that name) – and not long after Blue Cheer recorded that classic blues song (misnamed “Parchment Farm”) on their debut 1968 album, Vincebus Eruptum – plus the Willie Dixon song “You Can’t Judge a Book by the Cover” that was made famous by Bo Diddley. But Cactus’s own songs rock just as hard, like “Let Me Swim”, “Oleo” and “Feel So Good”.
Cactus albums were never big sellers, but they worked fast, recording two more albums in 1971, Restrictions and One Way . . . or Another plus ’Ot ’n’ Sweaty the following year in a revamped line-up after Jim McCarty left. Their brand of American-style blues rock has been cited as an influence on many bands that followed; Wikipedia lists Aerosmith, Van Halen, .38 Special, Anvil, the Black Crowes, Montrose, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and the Black Keys. Cactus has been through a succession of line-ups over the years and is still active as of 2012.
* * *
The article on Small Faces in Allmusic opens: “Small Faces were the best English band never to hit it big in America.” Frontman Steve Marriott was the lead guitarist and lead vocalist for the band; he had already appeared in a key role in the musical Oliver!. Ronnie Lane (bass guitar) invited Marriott to jam with his band the Pioneers, which also included Kenney Jones (drums) – while that gig didn’t go well, the three decided to move in the direction of American R&B. The fourth bandmember was Jimmy Winston (organ), who was replaced by 1966 with Ian McLagan.
Small Faces had a rocky start with Decca Records but eventually began working under one of England’s top producers, Andrew Loog Oldham – who had worked with the Rolling Stones, Marianne Faithfull, and others – and signed them as the top act on his new company, Immediate Records. Their first album with that label, Small Faces – a self-titled album like their debut effort with Decca, Small Faces – was an instant hit in mid-1967 and included a song that even made the charts in the U.S., “Itchycoo Park”.
Small Faces’ response to the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album was a remarkable psychedelic achievement called Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake; the album was originally released in a round cover and had the appearance of a vintage tobacco tin. And I sure wish it would show up from the LP’s in the Katrina mud that I still haven’t cleaned up, because I miss it!
As the 1960’s wound down, Steve Marriott wanted to make some changes in Small Faces, and one day he just took off in the middle of a concert. Marriott had wanted to bring Peter Frampton into the band; instead, the two put together a new band called Humble Pie.
* * *
The remaining bandmembers in Small Faces found two dynamite replacements for Steve Marriott; Rod Stewart was brought in as the vocalist, and Ron Wood joined as the lead guitarist. The direction of the band changed dramatically after that; although Small Faces was still the name on the first album by this line-up, First Step (at least in the U.S.), the band is better known as Faces. Rod Stewart did some of his best work with Faces, and his first big hit as a solo artist, “Maggie May” (from Rod’s excellent solo album Every Picture Tells a Story) was released during the height of his time in the band. They released only four albums – and just three as Faces – but all are great and highly influential. By the time Ooh La La came out in 1973, Rod Stewart’s superstar status was wearing on the other bandmembers; Ronnie Lane left the band right after that. Ron Wood was lured to the Rolling Stones, drummer Kenney Jones eventually joined the Who, and Ian McLagan became a sought-after session keyboard player.
* * *
After Cactus (initially) broke up in 1972, Jeff Beck joined with Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice in a short-lived power trio called Beck, Bogert & Appice. While Rod Stewart was long gone, they represented ¾ of the originally planned line-up for Cactus. A lot had happened in rock music in the two years since Jeff Beck had his motorcycle accident – Crosby, Stills and Nash for one – so the surnames sufficed to name the band. Also, Beck had recorded two albums with the Jeff Beck Group in the interim.
Their sole album Beck, Bogert & Appice came out in March 1973 and is one of the first rock albums that I can remember being advertised on television; I can still hear the announcer solemnly intoning: “Beck . . . Bogert . . . Appice!” The album hit #12 on the Billboard album charts and has been reissued several times. A live album by the band was issued only in Japan. The predictably unpredictable Jeff Beck abruptly abandoned work early in the preparation of the second album by Beck, Bogert & Appice, and that was that.
* * *
Galen Niles, one of the bandmembers in this month’s Under-Appreciated Rock Band, HOMER was previously in a legendary garage rock band called the Outcasts and was later in a previous UARB, Ultra. I wrote a Wikipedia article on the Outcasts several years ago and talked quite a bit about Homer already in the Ultra post.
Chet Himes and Galen Niles were the co-founders of Homer and lived at the same apartment complex when they were both in college at Texas State University. Himes recognized Niles as being in the Outcasts – which had only recently broken up – and tried to persuade him to join a band that he was putting together, but Niles said that he wasn’t interested. Himes kept at it; he recruited a lead singer, Frank Coy and a rhythm guitarist, Pat Cosgrove, so all he needed was a lead guitarist and a drummer. Finally, Galen Niles agreed to at least jam with them; he even brought in Gary Crapster, a drummer that he played in a band with while in high school.
Homer started out as a cover band; Galen Niles recalls that their varied playlist included the Zombies’ “She’s Not There”, Deep Purple’s “Hush”, and Wilson Pickett’s “Land of 1,000 Dances”. After numerous gigs in the dance circuit in and around San Antonio, Homer decided to put out one of their best received songs, Willie Nelson’s “I Never Cared for You” as their first single, backed with a Homer original called “Dandelion Wine” (written by Frank Coy). Galen Niles’ dad knew Howard Edwards, the morning DJ at KONO, and he got their single on the radio in San Antonio. Later, another local station, KTSA began playing the song as well, and they sold about 5,000 copies before they were even approached by a manager, never mind a record company. Galen Niles revealed in a 2002 interview given on lysergia.com: “The record peaked at number 2 in San Antonio on KONO’s Top 40.” Their manager, Huffman & Hathaway lined them up as the opening act for several national bands in this time period, including Blood, Sweat and Tears, Vanilla Fudge, and the Strawberry Alarm Clock.
Homer was fortunate enough to record their single at Robin Hood Studios in Tyler, Texas, which was managed by Robin “Hood” Brians. ZZ Top recorded their debut album, ZZ Top’s First Album at this studio, and Mouse and the Traps laid down their early tracks there as well, including their Dylanesque classic “A Public Execution”.
* * *
Homer secured a record deal with Columbia Records – but then their A&R man asked about the other songs they had recorded. Well, there weren’t any, so the band hurried back to Tyler and recorded “On the Wall” b/w “Texas Lights”; both songs were written by Galen Niles. By the time they got the songs in the mail, “I Never Cared for You” was beginning to slip in the local charts, so the Columbia deal went away. An independent release of “On the Wall” failed to chart.
For their next single, Homer went to Walt Andrus’ recording studio in Houston. By this time, Pat Cosgrove had exited and was replaced on second guitar by Howard Gloor. The next single was another original song (also written by Galen Niles) called “Sunrise”; this single too had little success.
Gary Crapster then left the band and was replaced on drums by Gene Coleman; Phil Bepko also joined as a second lead vocalist. By this point, “album rock” was looming large on the FM radio band, and Homer recognized that the old days of the 45 single were on their way out. Chet Himes and Chris Geppert set up a small recording studio in the back of Himes’ parents’ house and began working on the Homer LP. Chris Geppert later changed his name and gained considerable fame as Christopher Cross. The album was recorded in a little less than a year; most of the work was done at Himes’ studio, but some of the recording was done at other professional recording studios in Texas.
The band’s album Grown in U.S.A. was released in 1972 in a limited pressing of 1,000 and was well received; the album even made the “Bubbling Under the Top 100” list on the Billboard album charts. However, local promotion was limited, and Homer decided not to print any more albums after the initial thousand were sold out.
Phil Bepko came up with an ambitious rock opera called Hieronymus, but he would leave the band along with Gene Coleman; Don Evans and Van Wilks, respectively, took their places before Homer took this new music on the road. Galen Niles recalls: “Man, [Homer] was a smokin’ band then – the fact was, the only reason we had a vocalist was to take up some space between the guitar solos.”
Some new tracks were laid down at Odyssey Recording Studio in Austin (where Chet Himes was working as a recording engineer), but ultimately, Homer broke up in 1974.
* * *
Allmusic is not particularly impressed with Homer; their short article on the band includes this comment: “The LP was an uncertain mix of multi-sectioned songs (sometimes with Mellotron) that had similarities to hard rock-based early British progressive rock, with touches of folk-rock and country-rock. Though played and arranged with confidence, it didn’t have material of high-enough quality to make it one of the better rarities of its type.” The original LP received a respectable 3 stars (out of 5), while the overview CD of their complete recordings that I have, Homer is not reviewed.
By contrast, the people at Gear Fab Records – one of the better reissue record companies – are quite enthusiastic about Homer; Galen Niles was brought in to write the liner notes for the 2012 CD, Homer. (The record company name comes from two Beatles-era expressions for “cool”; both are featured in the background singing on “All Those Years Ago”, the 1981 George Harrison song honoring recently assassinated John Lennon and also featuring the other two living Beatles in the band). Roger Maglio at Gear Fab worked for 10 years to bring the Homer music to CD; he first heard their songs in 2002 on an “unauthorized Italian release”: “I was amazed that their level of professionalism could be coupled with such a rawness that just seemed to work”. Nor is that the only coupling that he noted: Maglio called their sound “progressive rural rock”, and progressive rock with a rural flavor is so rare and improbable that I am hard pressed to think of another example.
What Allmusic calls “uncertain” I would praise as multi-layered; the juxtaposition of strong electric guitar and pedal steel guitar alone is almost unheard of. Unlike many progressive rock albums that flow from one song into another, Homer meanders unexpectedly, with several sections in the individual songs.
* * *
Past UARB Ultra was every bit as different from Homer as the Outcasts; this hard rock band grew out of the final line-up of Homer, with Galen Niles and Don Evans joining the new band. Chet Himes continued his career as a recording engineer, working with Ted Nugent, Carole King, Christopher Cross, and others. Van Wilks left to start a solo career.
* * *
Flashback: The Under-Appreciated Rock Artist of the Month for April 2012 – LINDA PIERRE KING
Well, this is timely: I just yesterday put in a mailorder for a second CD that features several other songs (though still not everything – see below) by Linda Pierre King, called It’s a Happening! Texas Girls of the 60’s.
YouTube has several songs, including her best, “Hard-Lovin’ Babe” that was recorded with some band called the Outcasts, but not the Outcasts that I talked about above that included Galen Niles. This song can be heard here, as taken from the new CD that has a somewhat cleaner sound than my copy: www.youtube.com/watch?v=nb_B9gAdRZU . “Who Cares?” is in a protest mode; it starts off a little shrill but has very thoughtful lyrics: www.youtube.com/watch?v=NODAnSALWFo&list=PLLGiu5j6kwN9PiUPApFH1W74mu6R3aQXy .
Someone else put “Hard-Lovin’ Babe” on YouTube and disputes what I wrote about her in my UARA post: “Don’t believe the BS on the web about LPK, no one has come forth to know her biography. She didn’t get into Any Rand (sic), nor end up in Greenwich Village, etc, and she wasn’t from Houston, either.” Fine by me if you don’t believe what I wrote, but considering that there are only gripes there, I will stand by what I said. (Anyway, this person turned out to be right).
However, the same person also added two previously unreleased songs by LPK; here is one of them, “More” (the theme from the unusual 1960’s movie Mondo Cane): www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3hLC5iOMLg . This recording of “Autumn Leaves” is also unreleased; this includes some chatter during the recording session and two false starts: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbzLHAje0Zw .
* * *
Picture Gallery: The Under-Appreciated Rock Band of the Month for April 2011 – BOHEMIAN VENDETTA
Here is a photo of the bandmembers:
And another:
* * *
Story of the Month: NUGGETS (from January 2011)
Thirty-some years ago, I picked up a two-record set with a neo-psychedelic cover called Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968. (I always just called it “Nuggets”, but Wikipedia uses the whole title). If the dates strike you odd – thinking, wait a minute, the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band didn’t come out until the summer of 1967 – well, that is true; but psychedelia had been around a long time before that mainstream hit. (Likewise, by the time the Bee Gees, John Travolta and the Saturday Night Fever crowd showed up, the disco craze was on the wane). Besides being one of the greatest compilation albums of all time – Rolling Stone puts it at #196 on the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time period – this was a record on a mission: By naming “the first psychedelic era” just three or four years after it had ended, Nuggets helped ensure that there would be a second (and a third) psychedelic era.
Even before I played it the first time, I knew I would love it, because I was already familiar with a lot of these bands. In fact, I picked up the debut albums by Blues Magoos and the Electric Prunes in the same shipment from Columbia Record Club back when; and it wasn’t long before I also had the first album by the Shadows of Knight, with their killer cover of Van Morrison’s “Gloria”. The Seeds’ “Pushin’ Too Hard” was another favorite, though it was awhile before I got an album.
Lenny Kaye, who would later be the guitarist for Patti Smith Group, helped put the album together and wrote the liner notes that are almost as well known as the album itself. Patti Smith has been more or less a recluse all of her professional life – the whole time I was in NY, her only performance was a poetry reading that I passed on – but she has been getting a little more prominence lately, I am delighted to see: She interviewed Johnny Depp in the current issue of Vanity Fair magazine and has an acclaimed memoir out now called Just Kids, about her life with her late roommate, the brilliant and notorious photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.
In an introductory note, Lenny Kaye expressed something that I felt as well while I was reading it: that there was this wonderful music floating around among the British Invasion bands and the girl groups and the Motown sound, and it was gone before we even knew what we were hearing, and wouldn’t it be great to hear all of these songs again in one place. Kaye called the music “punk rock” – the first high-profile use of that term – but these days, it is called garage rock and psychedelic rock. It is no exaggeration to say that this album told my soul what kind of music I really love.
Reading between the lines, many of the songs were apparently chosen by what had hit the Top 100 at some point during that time period; that would explain the presence of the strangest of the songs, the closing track “It’s-a-Happening” by the Magic Mushrooms, which remarkably made it to something like #94 for a week. Even more intriguing to me were the songs that hadn’t hit the charts at all. One immediate fave was “A Public Execution” by a Texas band called Mouse and the Traps (the song was officially issued under the name Mouse), doing something that I didn’t think would ever happen: someone else creating music along the lines of Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” and Highway 61 Revisited.
There about midway through the fourth side was a song that I didn’t think quite fit in: “Farmer John” by the Premiers. It was earlier than any of the other tracks, dating from 1964, and it sounded like it was recorded live at somebody’s picnic. The lyrics were simple – “Farmer John . . . I’m in love with your daughter . . . whoa-oh-oooh” – as was the beat and the slow, loping groove; but it just kept growing on me. Eventually Neil Young recorded a cover of the song in the same style on his excellent 1990 album Ragged Glory. The songwriter is Richard Berry – he is not related to Chuck Berry but has some seminal songs to his credit nonetheless; “Louie Louie” heads the list, but “Have Love, Will Travel” is almost as good.
(Note: Actually “Farmer John” was written and first performed by Don and Dewey, not Richard Berry).
So you want to be a rock ’n’ roll star
Then listen now to what I say
Just get an electric guitar
And take some time and learn how to play
And when your hair’s combed right and your pants fit tight
It’s gonna be all right
So said the Byrds – specifically songwriters Jim McGuinn and Chris Hillman – back in 1967, and the formula still works pretty well to this day. The song has been covered many times since, often with altered lyrics, with the version of “So You Want to be a Rock ’n’ Roll Star” by Patti Smith Group in 1979 being perhaps the best known cover.
The lyrics are more than a little cynical – check the next to last line – and the fact is, no one has really discovered the secret formula. “So You Want to be a Rock ’n’ Roll Star” was written in the wake of the creation of The Monkees television show and the Monkees band, who became known by many as the Pre-Fab Four (the Beatles of course being the original Fab Four).
In truth, only Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork started out as musicians; Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz were actors (in fact, I remembered previously seeing Dolenz in a TV show called Circus Boy). However, by the time they went on tour in late 1966, all four members of the Monkees were accomplished musicians and put on as good a show as most American rock bands of that period; I saw them myself (I believe in Greensboro, NC), and I enjoyed the show – probably the first major rock concert that I attended.
* * *
Anyway, as difficult as it is to get your foot in the door – land that first recording contract, or get that first hit single – keeping at it is even tougher. Take Buffalo Springfield for instance; they were a mid-1960’s folk-rock band that was loaded with talent. The band took their quizzical name from the side of a steamroller; released three fine albums and a topical hit single that still gets a lot of radio play, “For What it’s Worth” (another Stephen Stills song on Buffalo Springfield, their debut album, “Sit Down, I Think I Love You” was a hit for the Mojo Men in 1967); had numerous line-up changes; and ultimately broke up – all in the space of barely two years. I heard an interview on the radio one time with one of the bandmembers, Stephen Stills I think; they knew that they were part of a classic band, but for a variety of reasons, they could not keep it going. Stills was 21 when Buffalo Springfield formed and 23 when they broke up; clearly, he had a lot more rock and roll in him.
Now what?
* * *
The life of a rock band is analogous to people’s experiences with going to college. Sometimes you don’t get out of the first semester, other times the thing dies away after a couple of years. The average life of a successful rock band is probably the four or five years that it takes to get a degree. And occasionally, one is able to, ahem, stay in academia for a lifetime – witness the Rolling Stones, Golden Earring, and KISS.
Unbeknownst to most of us, some bands stayed together for decades: Status Quo is known in America only for their 1967 psychedelic hit “Pictures of Matchstick Men”; but over the course of their career, they have released 60 songs that charted in the U.K. (the most recent in 2010) – more than any other rock group – and 23 of these were Top 10 hits. One of my long-time favorites, the Dutch band Shocking Blue released a huge hit in 1970, “Venus”. Featuring striking lead singer Mariska Veres (though she was not an original member), the band released 25 singles and 11 albums, though I had to go to Europe to find their albums.
Later, the rock bands get back together, much as colleges have reunions.
* * *
Buffalo Springfield started with a chance meeting of Stephen Stills and Neil Young; later, Stills and his friend Richie Furay were driving along Sunset Boulevard in L.A. and spotted a hearse. Stills was sure that it was Young’s, and sure enough, it was. Neil Young had another Canadian in the hearse as a passenger: Bruce Palmer. These four formed the band with drummer Dewey Martin.
As is often true, there were tensions in the band; Stephen Stills and Neil Young never really got along, and that has apparently continued to the present day. Young was in and out of the band several times over their short life, and Bruce Palmer was fighting deportation back to Canada. By the time that their final album, Last Time Around was released – back when bands announced that sort of thing – Jim Messina was part of the line-up. One of Neil Young’s first well-known songs, “I Am a Child” was on that album; but he really shone on the previous album, Buffalo Springfield Again with the opening cut “Mr. Soul”, “Expecting to Fly”, and the ambitious “Broken Arrow” (Young named his music publishing company after this song).
* * *
David Crosby had been a member of the Byrds but was forced out in late 1967 due to friction with others in the band. By early 1968, Stephen Stills was one of several musicians who began sailing with Crosby on his yacht and jamming with him. One of the first fruits of these sessions was the apocalyptic tale “Wooden Ships”, composed by Stills, Crosby, and Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane.
David Crosby met Graham Nash of the British Invasion band the Hollies when the Byrds toured England in 1966; when the Hollies came to L.A. in 1968, they reunited their acquaintance. At a party given by Nash’s then-girlfriend Joni Mitchell in July 1968, Stephen Stills and David Crosby performed a new Stills song called “You Don’t Have to Cry” with harmony vocals added by Graham Nash. The three realized that they had a unique chemistry, and Crosby, Stills & Nash was born.
As one of the few new bands, Crosby, Stills & Nash (Neil Young also played with them part of the time; the band was then called Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) was a hit at the 1969 Woodstock festival, including their performance of “Wooden Ships”. There was a renowned exchange between songs, where David Crosby notes that this is just their second gig, and then Stephen Stills says: “This is the second time we’ve ever played in front of people, man, we’re scared s--tless.”
Crosby, Stills & Nash wasn’t really as new as that quote seemed to indicate; the band had released their debut album Crosby, Stills & Nash in May 1969, three months before Woodstock, and the recording sessions began in June 1968. I had always thought that Neil Young was the man peeking out of the door on the back cover of Crosby, Stills & Nash, but it was actually their drummer Dallas Taylor. Young did join up for their next album, Déjà Vu; the album was released under the name Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (with drummer Dallas Taylor and bassist Greg Reeves also credited on the cover in smaller print).
Neil Young continued to record sporadically with the group; also, David Crosby and Graham Nash have released several albums with just the two of them.
Crosby, Stills, Nash and/or Young have released any number of cultural and counter-cultural touchstones over the years: “Ohio” (about the Kent State University shootings); “Woodstock” (written by Joni Mitchell based on what Graham Nash told her about the festival – Matthews’ Southern Comfort had a Number 1 hit in the U.K. with “Woodstock”); “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” (written about Judy Collins); “Teach Your Children” (featuring Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead on pedal steel guitar; the song actually made the country charts); “Helpless” (one of Neil Young’s loveliest songs); “Southern Man” (on Neil Young’s excellent solo album, After the Gold Rush, with Lynyrd Skynyrd good-naturedly answering the song in their hit “Sweet Home Alabama”); “Love the One You’re With” (first released on Stephen Stills’ debut solo album, Stephen Stills – live versions of “Southern Man” and “Love the One You’re With” appear on the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young double album 4 Way Street); etc.
* * *
One of the problems with creating new rock bands out of old ones is recording contracts: Just because a rock band breaks up doesn’t usually mean that the members of the band are no longer bound by them. You might have noticed over the years that even guest musicians playing on someone else’s album appear “courtesy of” another record company.
When Last Time Around was being wound up, Stephen Stills and Neil Young had already exited Buffalo Springfield; and Richie Furay (guitar and vocals) and Jim Messina (bass guitar) were about the only ones left. For the final track laid down by Buffalo Springfield, Furay and Messina were joined by Rusty Young (pedal steel guitar); he was a rarity in that time period in being one of the few steel guitarists who felt comfortable playing rock music. The three stuck together; at Young’s suggestion, they added Randy Meisner (bass guitar and vocals), who had been in a band called the Poor, and George Grantham (drums and vocals), who had been in a psychedelic folk/rock band called Boenzee Cryque with Rusty Young.
The band first began calling themselves Pogo, but Walt Kelly, the creator of the popular comic strip Pogo objected, so they switched to Poco. Poco became one of the earliest and most long-lived country-rock bands.
Several record companies were interested in signing the new act, but they hit a road block: Richie Furay and Jim Messina were still signed to Atlantic Records as part of Buffalo Springfield. Meanwhile, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were having the same problem getting signed. David Geffen, then a young talent scout, arranged for the recording contracts for Stephen Stills and Neil Young to be swapped for those of Richie Furay and Jim Messina, so that CSNY could be signed to Atlantic Records, and Poco could be signed to Epic Records.
* * *
Poco’s first album, Pickin’ up the Pieces is considered to be a classic of the country-rock genre, the leading sound emerging from Southern California in the 1970’s and into the 1980’s. But their internal problems began almost immediately: Randy Meisner played on the first album but was asked to leave the band after becoming angry at being left out of the final mixing and production of the tracks on the record. Poco went further than most in its acrimony: Although his instrumental contributions were left in, Meisner’s lead vocals were removed from the album (George Grantham sung new ones to take their place), and he was taken out of the cover painting and replaced with a dog.
After leaving the band, Randy Meisner played with Rick Nelson for a while and then joined another country-rock outfit that eventually dubbed themselves the Eagles. Jim Messina left not long after that and started a fruitful collaboration with Kenny Loggins as Loggins and Messina.
Richie Furay stayed with the band through their sixth album, Crazy Eyes (1973); the album made the Top 40, but with the lackluster sales of both albums and singles, even he was starting to get discouraged. Poco hung in there and hit something of a creative peak with Rose of Cimarron (1976); the title track, “Rose of Cimarron”, written by Rusty Young was covered by Emmylou Harris and was the de facto title track on her album Cimarron. Though only Rusty Young remained among the founding members, their 1978 album Legend was the band’s most successful, reaching #14 on the Billboard album charts and including two Top 20 singles, “Crazy Love” and “Heart of the Night”.
* * *
If I remember right, I saw a display at the local Record Bar showing Poco emerging from Buffalo Springfield; and Cactus growing out of another classic 1960’s band, Vanilla Fudge. VF had a well developed formula of covering a variety of hit songs in a slowed down, psychedelicized manner; their debut album, Vanilla Fudge (1967) was filled with them: the Supremes hit “You Keep Me Hanging On” (which is what got them signed in the first place to the Atlantic Records affiliate, Atco Records); two Beatles songs, “Ticket to Ride” and “Eleanor Rigby”; a Impressions classic “People Get Ready”; the Zombies song “She’s Not There”; and Sonny and Cher’s “Bang Bang”. Vanilla Fudge probably could not have kept this up for long no matter what, but they basically set themselves up for the so-called sophomore jinx with their second effort, a more textured and ambitious concept album constructed around another Sonny and Cher song (“The Beat Goes On”), called The Beat Goes On.
Vanilla Fudge had the good fortune to tour with Jimi Hendrix, was the opening act on several concerts on Cream’s last tour, and finally began touring with the brand-new Led Zeppelin opening for them. After hanging in there for several more albums (Sundazed Records has reissued four of them), the band broke up in early 1970.
* * *
Cactus was originally going to be the rhythm section of Vanilla Fudge – Tim Bogert (bass guitar) and Carmine Appice (drums) – coupled with guitar hero Jeff Beck and future superstar Rod Stewart. What a rock band that would have been also! Unfortunately, Beck had a bad motorcycle accident and was sidelined for 18 months. Instead, the line-up in Cactus was rounded out by Jim McCarty (guitar), formerly with Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, and singer Rusty Day from Ted Nugent’s early band Amboy Dukes.
The band’s first album, Cactus was one of the best hard rock albums of 1970. The album opens with a fierce version of the Mose Allison song “Parchman Farm” (about the notorious Mississippi State Penitentiary of that name) – and not long after Blue Cheer recorded that classic blues song (misnamed “Parchment Farm”) on their debut 1968 album, Vincebus Eruptum – plus the Willie Dixon song “You Can’t Judge a Book by the Cover” that was made famous by Bo Diddley. But Cactus’s own songs rock just as hard, like “Let Me Swim”, “Oleo” and “Feel So Good”.
Cactus albums were never big sellers, but they worked fast, recording two more albums in 1971, Restrictions and One Way . . . or Another plus ’Ot ’n’ Sweaty the following year in a revamped line-up after Jim McCarty left. Their brand of American-style blues rock has been cited as an influence on many bands that followed; Wikipedia lists Aerosmith, Van Halen, .38 Special, Anvil, the Black Crowes, Montrose, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and the Black Keys. Cactus has been through a succession of line-ups over the years and is still active as of 2012.
* * *
The article on Small Faces in Allmusic opens: “Small Faces were the best English band never to hit it big in America.” Frontman Steve Marriott was the lead guitarist and lead vocalist for the band; he had already appeared in a key role in the musical Oliver!. Ronnie Lane (bass guitar) invited Marriott to jam with his band the Pioneers, which also included Kenney Jones (drums) – while that gig didn’t go well, the three decided to move in the direction of American R&B. The fourth bandmember was Jimmy Winston (organ), who was replaced by 1966 with Ian McLagan.
Small Faces had a rocky start with Decca Records but eventually began working under one of England’s top producers, Andrew Loog Oldham – who had worked with the Rolling Stones, Marianne Faithfull, and others – and signed them as the top act on his new company, Immediate Records. Their first album with that label, Small Faces – a self-titled album like their debut effort with Decca, Small Faces – was an instant hit in mid-1967 and included a song that even made the charts in the U.S., “Itchycoo Park”.
Small Faces’ response to the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album was a remarkable psychedelic achievement called Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake; the album was originally released in a round cover and had the appearance of a vintage tobacco tin. And I sure wish it would show up from the LP’s in the Katrina mud that I still haven’t cleaned up, because I miss it!
As the 1960’s wound down, Steve Marriott wanted to make some changes in Small Faces, and one day he just took off in the middle of a concert. Marriott had wanted to bring Peter Frampton into the band; instead, the two put together a new band called Humble Pie.
* * *
The remaining bandmembers in Small Faces found two dynamite replacements for Steve Marriott; Rod Stewart was brought in as the vocalist, and Ron Wood joined as the lead guitarist. The direction of the band changed dramatically after that; although Small Faces was still the name on the first album by this line-up, First Step (at least in the U.S.), the band is better known as Faces. Rod Stewart did some of his best work with Faces, and his first big hit as a solo artist, “Maggie May” (from Rod’s excellent solo album Every Picture Tells a Story) was released during the height of his time in the band. They released only four albums – and just three as Faces – but all are great and highly influential. By the time Ooh La La came out in 1973, Rod Stewart’s superstar status was wearing on the other bandmembers; Ronnie Lane left the band right after that. Ron Wood was lured to the Rolling Stones, drummer Kenney Jones eventually joined the Who, and Ian McLagan became a sought-after session keyboard player.
* * *
After Cactus (initially) broke up in 1972, Jeff Beck joined with Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice in a short-lived power trio called Beck, Bogert & Appice. While Rod Stewart was long gone, they represented ¾ of the originally planned line-up for Cactus. A lot had happened in rock music in the two years since Jeff Beck had his motorcycle accident – Crosby, Stills and Nash for one – so the surnames sufficed to name the band. Also, Beck had recorded two albums with the Jeff Beck Group in the interim.
Their sole album Beck, Bogert & Appice came out in March 1973 and is one of the first rock albums that I can remember being advertised on television; I can still hear the announcer solemnly intoning: “Beck . . . Bogert . . . Appice!” The album hit #12 on the Billboard album charts and has been reissued several times. A live album by the band was issued only in Japan. The predictably unpredictable Jeff Beck abruptly abandoned work early in the preparation of the second album by Beck, Bogert & Appice, and that was that.
* * *
Galen Niles, one of the bandmembers in this month’s Under-Appreciated Rock Band, HOMER was previously in a legendary garage rock band called the Outcasts and was later in a previous UARB, Ultra. I wrote a Wikipedia article on the Outcasts several years ago and talked quite a bit about Homer already in the Ultra post.
Chet Himes and Galen Niles were the co-founders of Homer and lived at the same apartment complex when they were both in college at Texas State University. Himes recognized Niles as being in the Outcasts – which had only recently broken up – and tried to persuade him to join a band that he was putting together, but Niles said that he wasn’t interested. Himes kept at it; he recruited a lead singer, Frank Coy and a rhythm guitarist, Pat Cosgrove, so all he needed was a lead guitarist and a drummer. Finally, Galen Niles agreed to at least jam with them; he even brought in Gary Crapster, a drummer that he played in a band with while in high school.
Homer started out as a cover band; Galen Niles recalls that their varied playlist included the Zombies’ “She’s Not There”, Deep Purple’s “Hush”, and Wilson Pickett’s “Land of 1,000 Dances”. After numerous gigs in the dance circuit in and around San Antonio, Homer decided to put out one of their best received songs, Willie Nelson’s “I Never Cared for You” as their first single, backed with a Homer original called “Dandelion Wine” (written by Frank Coy). Galen Niles’ dad knew Howard Edwards, the morning DJ at KONO, and he got their single on the radio in San Antonio. Later, another local station, KTSA began playing the song as well, and they sold about 5,000 copies before they were even approached by a manager, never mind a record company. Galen Niles revealed in a 2002 interview given on lysergia.com: “The record peaked at number 2 in San Antonio on KONO’s Top 40.” Their manager, Huffman & Hathaway lined them up as the opening act for several national bands in this time period, including Blood, Sweat and Tears, Vanilla Fudge, and the Strawberry Alarm Clock.
Homer was fortunate enough to record their single at Robin Hood Studios in Tyler, Texas, which was managed by Robin “Hood” Brians. ZZ Top recorded their debut album, ZZ Top’s First Album at this studio, and Mouse and the Traps laid down their early tracks there as well, including their Dylanesque classic “A Public Execution”.
* * *
Homer secured a record deal with Columbia Records – but then their A&R man asked about the other songs they had recorded. Well, there weren’t any, so the band hurried back to Tyler and recorded “On the Wall” b/w “Texas Lights”; both songs were written by Galen Niles. By the time they got the songs in the mail, “I Never Cared for You” was beginning to slip in the local charts, so the Columbia deal went away. An independent release of “On the Wall” failed to chart.
For their next single, Homer went to Walt Andrus’ recording studio in Houston. By this time, Pat Cosgrove had exited and was replaced on second guitar by Howard Gloor. The next single was another original song (also written by Galen Niles) called “Sunrise”; this single too had little success.
Gary Crapster then left the band and was replaced on drums by Gene Coleman; Phil Bepko also joined as a second lead vocalist. By this point, “album rock” was looming large on the FM radio band, and Homer recognized that the old days of the 45 single were on their way out. Chet Himes and Chris Geppert set up a small recording studio in the back of Himes’ parents’ house and began working on the Homer LP. Chris Geppert later changed his name and gained considerable fame as Christopher Cross. The album was recorded in a little less than a year; most of the work was done at Himes’ studio, but some of the recording was done at other professional recording studios in Texas.
The band’s album Grown in U.S.A. was released in 1972 in a limited pressing of 1,000 and was well received; the album even made the “Bubbling Under the Top 100” list on the Billboard album charts. However, local promotion was limited, and Homer decided not to print any more albums after the initial thousand were sold out.
Phil Bepko came up with an ambitious rock opera called Hieronymus, but he would leave the band along with Gene Coleman; Don Evans and Van Wilks, respectively, took their places before Homer took this new music on the road. Galen Niles recalls: “Man, [Homer] was a smokin’ band then – the fact was, the only reason we had a vocalist was to take up some space between the guitar solos.”
Some new tracks were laid down at Odyssey Recording Studio in Austin (where Chet Himes was working as a recording engineer), but ultimately, Homer broke up in 1974.
* * *
Allmusic is not particularly impressed with Homer; their short article on the band includes this comment: “The LP was an uncertain mix of multi-sectioned songs (sometimes with Mellotron) that had similarities to hard rock-based early British progressive rock, with touches of folk-rock and country-rock. Though played and arranged with confidence, it didn’t have material of high-enough quality to make it one of the better rarities of its type.” The original LP received a respectable 3 stars (out of 5), while the overview CD of their complete recordings that I have, Homer is not reviewed.
By contrast, the people at Gear Fab Records – one of the better reissue record companies – are quite enthusiastic about Homer; Galen Niles was brought in to write the liner notes for the 2012 CD, Homer. (The record company name comes from two Beatles-era expressions for “cool”; both are featured in the background singing on “All Those Years Ago”, the 1981 George Harrison song honoring recently assassinated John Lennon and also featuring the other two living Beatles in the band). Roger Maglio at Gear Fab worked for 10 years to bring the Homer music to CD; he first heard their songs in 2002 on an “unauthorized Italian release”: “I was amazed that their level of professionalism could be coupled with such a rawness that just seemed to work”. Nor is that the only coupling that he noted: Maglio called their sound “progressive rural rock”, and progressive rock with a rural flavor is so rare and improbable that I am hard pressed to think of another example.
What Allmusic calls “uncertain” I would praise as multi-layered; the juxtaposition of strong electric guitar and pedal steel guitar alone is almost unheard of. Unlike many progressive rock albums that flow from one song into another, Homer meanders unexpectedly, with several sections in the individual songs.
* * *
Past UARB Ultra was every bit as different from Homer as the Outcasts; this hard rock band grew out of the final line-up of Homer, with Galen Niles and Don Evans joining the new band. Chet Himes continued his career as a recording engineer, working with Ted Nugent, Carole King, Christopher Cross, and others. Van Wilks left to start a solo career.
* * *
Well, this is timely: I just yesterday put in a mailorder for a second CD that features several other songs (though still not everything – see below) by Linda Pierre King, called It’s a Happening! Texas Girls of the 60’s.
YouTube has several songs, including her best, “Hard-Lovin’ Babe” that was recorded with some band called the Outcasts, but not the Outcasts that I talked about above that included Galen Niles. This song can be heard here, as taken from the new CD that has a somewhat cleaner sound than my copy: www.youtube.com/watch?v=nb_B9gAdRZU . “Who Cares?” is in a protest mode; it starts off a little shrill but has very thoughtful lyrics: www.youtube.com/watch?v=NODAnSALWFo&list=PLLGiu5j6kwN9PiUPApFH1W74mu6R3aQXy .
Someone else put “Hard-Lovin’ Babe” on YouTube and disputes what I wrote about her in my UARA post: “Don’t believe the BS on the web about LPK, no one has come forth to know her biography. She didn’t get into Any Rand (sic), nor end up in Greenwich Village, etc, and she wasn’t from Houston, either.” Fine by me if you don’t believe what I wrote, but considering that there are only gripes there, I will stand by what I said. (Anyway, this person turned out to be right).
However, the same person also added two previously unreleased songs by LPK; here is one of them, “More” (the theme from the unusual 1960’s movie Mondo Cane): www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3hLC5iOMLg . This recording of “Autumn Leaves” is also unreleased; this includes some chatter during the recording session and two false starts: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbzLHAje0Zw .
Picture Gallery: The Under-Appreciated Rock Band of the Month for April 2011 – BOHEMIAN VENDETTA
Here is a photo of the bandmembers:
And another:
Story of the Month: NUGGETS (from January 2011)
Thirty-some years ago, I picked up a two-record set with a neo-psychedelic cover called Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968. (I always just called it “Nuggets”, but Wikipedia uses the whole title). If the dates strike you odd – thinking, wait a minute, the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band didn’t come out until the summer of 1967 – well, that is true; but psychedelia had been around a long time before that mainstream hit. (Likewise, by the time the Bee Gees, John Travolta and the Saturday Night Fever crowd showed up, the disco craze was on the wane). Besides being one of the greatest compilation albums of all time – Rolling Stone puts it at #196 on the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time period – this was a record on a mission: By naming “the first psychedelic era” just three or four years after it had ended, Nuggets helped ensure that there would be a second (and a third) psychedelic era.
Even before I played it the first time, I knew I would love it, because I was already familiar with a lot of these bands. In fact, I picked up the debut albums by Blues Magoos and the Electric Prunes in the same shipment from Columbia Record Club back when; and it wasn’t long before I also had the first album by the Shadows of Knight, with their killer cover of Van Morrison’s “Gloria”. The Seeds’ “Pushin’ Too Hard” was another favorite, though it was awhile before I got an album.
Lenny Kaye, who would later be the guitarist for Patti Smith Group, helped put the album together and wrote the liner notes that are almost as well known as the album itself. Patti Smith has been more or less a recluse all of her professional life – the whole time I was in NY, her only performance was a poetry reading that I passed on – but she has been getting a little more prominence lately, I am delighted to see: She interviewed Johnny Depp in the current issue of Vanity Fair magazine and has an acclaimed memoir out now called Just Kids, about her life with her late roommate, the brilliant and notorious photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.
In an introductory note, Lenny Kaye expressed something that I felt as well while I was reading it: that there was this wonderful music floating around among the British Invasion bands and the girl groups and the Motown sound, and it was gone before we even knew what we were hearing, and wouldn’t it be great to hear all of these songs again in one place. Kaye called the music “punk rock” – the first high-profile use of that term – but these days, it is called garage rock and psychedelic rock. It is no exaggeration to say that this album told my soul what kind of music I really love.
Reading between the lines, many of the songs were apparently chosen by what had hit the Top 100 at some point during that time period; that would explain the presence of the strangest of the songs, the closing track “It’s-a-Happening” by the Magic Mushrooms, which remarkably made it to something like #94 for a week. Even more intriguing to me were the songs that hadn’t hit the charts at all. One immediate fave was “A Public Execution” by a Texas band called Mouse and the Traps (the song was officially issued under the name Mouse), doing something that I didn’t think would ever happen: someone else creating music along the lines of Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” and Highway 61 Revisited.
There about midway through the fourth side was a song that I didn’t think quite fit in: “Farmer John” by the Premiers. It was earlier than any of the other tracks, dating from 1964, and it sounded like it was recorded live at somebody’s picnic. The lyrics were simple – “Farmer John . . . I’m in love with your daughter . . . whoa-oh-oooh” – as was the beat and the slow, loping groove; but it just kept growing on me. Eventually Neil Young recorded a cover of the song in the same style on his excellent 1990 album Ragged Glory. The songwriter is Richard Berry – he is not related to Chuck Berry but has some seminal songs to his credit nonetheless; “Louie Louie” heads the list, but “Have Love, Will Travel” is almost as good.
(Note: Actually “Farmer John” was written and first performed by Don and Dewey, not Richard Berry).
