Urban Spacemen & Wayfaring Strangers:
Overlooked Innovators & Eccentric
Visionaries of ‘60s Rock
[Updated Ebook Edition]
Text copyright © 2014 Richie Unterberger
All rights reserved
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface to the Ebook Edition
Foreword
Introduction
1. Made in Britain, Lost in America
The Pretty Things:
Founded by an original Rolling Stone, they helped set the standard for both wild rhythm and blues and the psychedelic rock opera
The Poets:
The finest Scottish group of the 1960s, excelling at both melancholy folk-rock ballads and hard mod pop that rocked the house
2. Psychedelic Sailors
The Crazy World of Arthur Brown:
The god of hellfire had much more to offer than his one big hit single, combining poetry, philosophy, and theater into explorations of good and evil
The Electric Prunes:
One of the oddest psychedelic journeys of the decade, from the Top Forty to an album-length Latin mass, combining state-of-the-art guitar distortion, varispeed tapes, garage blues-rock, commercial songwriting—and Bo Diddley beats
Randy Holden:
From surf to psychedelia to metal, the self-described “guitar god” was the closest American counterpart to Jeff Beck, eventually attempting to simulate the sound of a nuclear bomb with his power duo
Kaleidoscope:
An apt name for a California troupe that could play rock, folk, Appalachian, Cajun, blues, soul, and Middle Eastern music, singly or all at once, on enough instruments to stock a music store
3. Rock Satirists
The Fugs:
Sex, drugs, poetry, and revolution, delivered with a satirical edge by the most uncompromising left-wing band of the 1960s
The Bonzo Dog Band:
British music hall and vaudeville revivalists who became the prince clowns of the rock underground, with exploding robots, urban spacemen, and a priceless sense of humor that inspired Monty Python
4. Unheralded Heroes
Giorgio Gomelsky:
As manager and producer of the Yardbirds, the first (albeit unofficial) manager of the Rolling Stones, promoter of British blues, and collaborator with star and cult acts such as Julie Driscoll, Blossom Toes, and Magma, he may have done more than any other nonmusician to cultivate groundbreaking British and European rock music
Shel Talmy:
As producer for the Kinks, the Who, and the Creation, he was instrumental in bringing the power chord and feedback into rock music, and did stints behind the boards for Manfred Mann, the Easybeats, top British folk-rockers Pentangle, and a very young David Bowie
5. Two-Shot Wonders
Bobby Fuller:
After bringing the Buddy Holly sound into the 1960s, he might have been on the verge of something even better before dying violently in a case that remains unsolved
The Beau Brummels:
Unfairly dismissed by some as British Invasion imitators, they were underrated folk-rock and country-rock pioneers, as well as the spiritual forefathers of the San Francisco Sound
Mike Brown:
The keyboardist and composer who made some of the most effective fusions of rock, pop, and classical music as the prime creative force in the Left Banke, Montage, and the Stories
6. Blue- and Brown-Eyed Soulsters
Thee Midniters:
The best Latino band of the 1960s, with a repertoire encompassing heartbreaking soul ballads, uptempo soul-rockers, gnarly garage punk, and Latin soul-jazz
The Rationals:
White-hot blue-eyed soul from Ann Arbor, Michigan, that couldn’t catch on elsewhere, and was just a little too early to ride the Michigan hard rock explosion of the late 1960s
7. Folk-Rock Innovators
Dino Valenti:
The author of the hippie anthem “Get Together” influenced numerous major folk-rockers and made one great cult solo album, but could never get it together to make another
Richard & Mimi Fariña:
Among the earliest folk musicians to move toward a fusion of folk and rock, the duo’s promising career was cut off by Richard’s death in a motorcycle accident, just after the publication of his acclaimed novel Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me
Fred Neil:
The super-reclusive owner of the finest and lowest white folk-blues voice of his time, overlooked facilitator in the merger of folk and rock, and author of “Everybody's Talkin’”
Tim Buckley:
With one of the most beautiful and versatile voices in rock history, he established himself as a master of shimmering, arty folk-rock before progressively ambitious sojourns into jazz and the avant-garde proved too demanding and unpredictable for his audience
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Liner Notes
Preface to the Ebook Edition of Urban Spacemen &
Wayfaring Strangers
When Urban Spacemen & Wayfaring Strangers was first published in 2000, the 1960s had been over for thirty years. It seemed like interest in the decade’s rock, popular and obscure, was building, at least judging from the growing number of CD reissues if nothing else. Even those who championed that music above all else, however, could be forgiven for doubting whether the sounds would have such resonance on the fiftieth anniversary of the Beatles’ first hit. The records would be almost a whole generation deeper in the past; more than a dozen years of new artists would have cropped up in the meantime; and the original artists, to be realistic, would be literally dying off, or certainly becoming less active. Some listeners not yet born when the 1960s ended would not only be parents, but also grandparents.
Yet if anything, these echoes in time are stronger now then they were then. Reissues of music from the decade continue to pour forth, much of it unreleased at the time, even if they’re more often than not downloaded, file-shared, or heard for free on the Internet rather than purchased at a record store (itself an institution struggling for survival). Film documentaries on ‘60s rockers who would have been considered unimaginably uncommercial subjects in the twentieth century appear with regularity. Major rock magazines and more dedicated specialist zines (and now Internet sites/blogs) interview and profile icons of the age, from superstar to cult, at a prodigious rate. Dozens, if not hundreds, of musicians from the era have penned their memoirs, again ranging from chart-topping behemoths to fringe figures who never cracked the five-figure mark in sales. Bands who had trouble even getting record contracts back in the day are reuniting and touring at a pace too rapid to track.
When I wrote Urban Spacemen, relatively little information about the nineteen artists I profiled was readily available and accessible. In more than one instance, the best source, depressingly, was something I had already written about one of them. To get a sense of how much that landscape has changed, let’s just survey how the then-little-known legends I wrote about have been documented since the book’s publication:
Full/partial biographies and/or memoirs of a half-dozen of them have been issued, with at least five others reported in the works to my knowledge;
Film documentaries about two of them have been completed, with at least one other in the works, and biopics are being discussed (“in production” is too strong a word at this point) for two others;
Multi-disc box sets have been produced for eight of them;
The full catalog of all of them (not counting the two producers) is now available, as well as considerable additional unreleased material on expanded CD reissues and stand-alone projects. That even holds true for a few groups (the Poets, Thee Midniters, and the Rationals) whose work was almost wholly out of print when the book came out. Even Fred Neil’s mediocre pop-rock singles of the late 1950s and early 1960s have been compiled onto CD, as have some raw previously unissued recordings by bands that evolved into the Electric Prunes.
So why go back and update Urban Spacemen for its ebook edition? If the mission of exposing these artists to a wider audience that expands all the time has been accomplished, what’s to add?
Plenty, as it turns out. For the continual resurgence of interest in their music has been accompanied by the emergence of yet more information about them, not to mention newly unearthed recordings, film clips, and other documents that more fully round out their stories. And for all the CDs, films, magazine features/interviews, and other books that have been generated (and will likely continue to appear in the future), I feel these chapters remain some of the most in-depth examinations of these musicians, and their contributions to both rock and popular culture, that have been published.
This expanded ebook edition makes some corrections and updates, drawing upon information that surfaced in the dozen or so years since the print edition (still available) came out. These range from the small to the substantial, as in descriptions of unreleased material I was able to hear by George Gallacher (of the Poets) and Richard & Mimi Fariña. It also, however, adds material from additional interviews I conducted with some of the musicians and their associates after the book was first published in 2000. Throw in some mini-reviews of post-2000 releases in the discographies, and this ebook has about 10,000 more words than the print version. I hope the additions make it worthwhile for those of you who read it first time around.
Specifically, the book includes additional material from post-2000 interviews with these figures: George Gallacher of the Poets, Chris Darrow of Kaleidoscope, Shel Talmy, and Willie Garcia of Thee Midniters. Some quotes from my original interviews with Fraser Watson of the Poets and Randy Holden have been added. Other quotes have been added from interviews with the following people who were not interviewed for the print edition: Andrew Oldham (in the Poets chapter), Michael Stuart of the Fender IV, the Sons of Adam, and Love (in the Randy Holden chapter), Tom Feher of the Left Banke (in the Mike Brown chapter), Vance Chapman of Montage (in the Mike Brown chapter), Louie Perez of Los Lobos (in the Thee Midniters chapter), Barry McGuire, Howard Solomon, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Denny Doherty of the Mamas & the Papas (in the Fred Neil chapter), and Jim Fielder and Jac Holzman (in the Tim Buckley chapter).
In most cases there usually haven’t been major developments in the musical careers of these pioneers, but I’ve added postscripts at the end of each chapter with brief updates. Sadly, in some cases these include the deaths of some of the musicians and their associates since Urban Spacemen’s original publication. Among them are a few that I interviewed for the book: Mimi Fariña, George Gallacher of the Poets, Bob Keane (Bobby Fuller’s producer), Tuli Kupferberg of the Fugs, Romeo Prado of Thee Midniters, Mark Tulin of the Electric Prunes, and rock journalist Paul Williams, who discussed meeting and writing about Richard and Mimi Fariña.
But the essentials remain the same, and I’ve limited the additional material mostly to direct quotes from my own interviews, as well as particularly interesting new information and previously unknown recordings that have emerged. Some other things haven’t changed since 2003 either. You can still contact me at the same email address, richie@richieunterberger.com, with comments about this book or any of my other volumes. Information about all of my work remains available at the same website, www.richieunterberger.com.
Just the weekend before I wrote this preface to the ebook edition of Urban Spacemen, a couple of events brought home just how far-reaching the impact of the bands I wrote about has been – and will continue to be, more than a dozen years after the book’s release. On May 25, 2013, I saw the Pretty Things documentary Midnight to Six: 1965-1970 at a free screening in San Diego at the Memorial Day Weekend festival commemorating the 30th anniversary of Ugly Things, the long-running ‘60s rock-centered fanzine whose name was inspired by the band. That same night, the festival featured a performance by the Rosalyns, an all-woman band who named themselves after the Pretty Things’ first single, with Ugly Things publisher Mike Stax’s wife Anja on bass. In the audience were not only record collectors in their fifties and sixties, but rabid young enthusiasts in their thirties, twenties, or even younger if they managed to remember their fake IDs.
All this more than 5,000 miles from where the Pretty Things formed, as just a bunch of blues fanatic art students getting together to have some fun, never realizing their music would continue to inspire new generations of performers and listeners half a world away half a century later. Also more than 5,000 miles away, though only about 500 miles from San Diego, I slip Pretty Things audiovisual clips into community education rock history courses I teach at the College of Marin. Most of the other artists I cover in Urban Spacemen also find a way into the curriculum, often surprising even students who grew up during the time, never suspecting that many bands like the Pretty Things await rediscovery – or that they’ve been rediscovered already by many listeners, perhaps even their own children in some cases.
The music documented in Urban Spacemen might have been made almost fifty years ago. But its journey is far from over.
Richie Unterberger
May 2013
San Francisco
Foreword by Paul Kantner
When I read some of my own words in the Fred Neil section of this book, a genuine tear came to my eye as I thought back to my own musical childhood and just what a force Fred was for us 1950s middle-class kids. A sweetly nostalgic tear, for the child I was, and for the paths that Freddie set me on.
As with many of the musicians chronicled in this book, Freddie set me, personally, on a path that was to be forever changed and from which there could be no retreat. That was Freddie’s value to me and, I imagine, the value of the other strange creatures revealed here: their paths to heaven, hell, and everything in between.
The path less traveled …
The people in this book had their own particular place “beyond the pale.” From Arthur Brown and the Pretty Things in Britain, to the Beau Brummels and Tim Buckley here in America, the world-absorbing nature of these eclectic artists and the turbulent times around them reflected a world exploding with possibility and impossible dreams. But they were dreams that often came true beyond the original intentions of any of us. Achieving some degree of success, as some of us did, my own Jefferson Airplane and the like made the path more confusing—though no less fascinating.
Freddie just led us to places that normal folksingers didn’t go. His albums became as important to me as the albums of the Weavers, who were also part of my prime influence. Between the two of them, it set me off on a really good path.
The path less traveled …
This is invariably true about all the artists here, in relation to the people they eventually influenced.
Freddie imprinted me with a vital, genuine reality that served me well—the way the blues did for others of my kind. As Jorma absorbed the Reverend Gary Davis, and Jagger and Richards absorbed Howlin’ Wolf, I absorbed Fred Neil. He was a tangible connection to the world of unconventional emotion. He set me on a trail, not to be like him, or to copy him, but to try to establish something as real to my own experience as Freddie’s music was to his.
All of the urban spacemen and wayfaring strangers in this book contributed a certain “something” that was priceless as well as precious—then, and now. Like Freddie, these musicians always existed beyond a certain pale … beyond beyond the pale, if you catch my drift. Their value is not necessarily so much in their individual works,
as it is in their very existence.
against all odds
into the wind
“the path less traveled”
Paul Kantner
April, 2000
INTRODUCTION
More great rock music was made in the 1960s than in any other decade. More than 30 years after that era drew to a close, its records continue to sell and get played on the radio, referenced by new generations of musicians, and, for better or for worse, licensed for lucrative commercials. There was no other time in which so many rock musicians made fabulous music and sold tons of records to a mainstream audience.
There was also no other time in which so many rock musicians made fabulous unknown music that did not sell tons of records, and remains virtually undiscovered by the general public. These artists crafted records that were almost as good as those of the period’s prime icons. In many cases they actually influenced the sounds of the 1960s’ biggest and best stars. Yet they have, to a large extent, been written out of the standard rock history available to the average listener through books, radio, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and loudspeakers at major sporting events.
Urban Spacemen & Wayfaring Strangers profiles 18 rock artists of the 1960s who did not receive (and still have no, received) their full credit and acclaim. The assortment of personalities on these pages is diverse, from pop-rockers who would have liked nothing more than to be staples of AM radio, to avowedly uncommercial rebels whose very names ensured limited-to-nonexistent airplay. There are psychedelic daredevils, gentle folk-rockers, pre-worldbeat outfits, blue-eyed soul men, and even some non-musicians who made enormous contributions as producers and mentors. What links them together? The easy answer is that they are all joined by a disparity between the talent they exhibited, and the lack of commercial and/or critical recognition they attained. The more complex explanation is that they are connected by an eclecticism, a willingness to take chances, and a search, conscious or unconscious, for artistic expression that led them down previously uncharted paths. These are the marks of almost any artist worthy of the name. Perhaps there were so many of them in 1960s rock in particular because so many paths, in rock music, had yet to be paved.
The 1960s, socially and musically, are probably the most analyzed (some would say overanalyzed) decade of the twentieth century. The rock giants that walked the earth—the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, the Beach Boys, even smaller giants like the Byrds and the odd cult giants like the Velvet Underground—have had their stories told and their work dissected many times over. This book is not an attempt to argue that the artists profiled within were better, or even as good. They weren’t as good. They were very good, though. And their stories have rarely been told, or at least not been haven’t been told often enough, or with the depth and respect they deserve.
I gave myself a similar task with my 1998 book Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll, which profiled 60 unjustly underrated and overlooked cult rockers from the 1950s through the 1980s. Urban Spaceman & Wayfaring Strangers is a sequel of sorts, but is not exactly an Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll Vol. 2. It started out that way. Books have a way of taking on a life of their own, however, and this one took me down a somewhat different path than its predecessor. Its ultimate direction had much to do with how I got involved with documenting obscure rock ‘n’ roll in the first place.
I don’t remember the 1960s, because I wasn’t there. At least, having been born in 1962, I wasn’t old enough to experience the music of the time at the time. It was the rock of the 1960s, however, that moved and fascinated me the most as I became old enough to buy records. For me, the love of the music started with the most popular musicians on earth, the Beatles, just as it did and continues to do for so many rock fans. That love led me next to the other music of the era, starting, as it also did for so many, with the Rolling Stones, and then working down the ladder to the Who, the Kinks, the Yardbirds, Jefferson Airplane, and others. It wasn’t until 1979, at the age of 17, that I made my way to a 1960s band that could fairly be considered an obscure cult act. That was Love, whose 1967 Forever Changes album was the first record I bought that no one I knew had ever heard. Its greatness was an indication that there was far more terrific music out there awaiting discovery than I even knew existed.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, I came into contact with a wealth of music that was impossible, or nearly impossible, to learn about through mainstream media channels. Working as a programmer at my college radio station, editing a magazine devoted to independent and alternative music of all sorts, and writing freelance reviews and articles for numerous books and publications, I heard an enormous amount of rock, soul, folk, jazz, and blues from throughout the twentieth century. Yet the rock of the 1960s, and particularly of the last half of the 1960s, continued to absorb me more than any other music did. These seemed more explosive years than any others for fueling unexpected innovations in rock music. There were so many directions to explore, so many nuggets to retrieve, and so many unpredictable sounds that had been conjured by musicians from all over the globe, influencing each other in obvious and subtle ways that were often unbeknownst even to themselves.
Some of these wonderful and (not necessarily) weird 1960s artists were profiled in Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll, including Syd Barrett, Nick Drake, Skip Spence, the Misunderstood, and my old favorites Love. Even so, 60 chapters, only a portion of which were devoted to acts from the 1960s, were insufficient space to get to even half of the worthy underappreciated rockers from that epoch. When positive response to Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll merited a follow-up, I determined that I’d focus entirely on overlooked performers that had emerged in the 1960s, repeating none of the selections from Unknown Legends. Again, I based these profiles around first-hand interviews with the artists themselves, or with close associates of theirs in cases where they were dead or inaccessible.
Furthermore, I decided to do far fewer chapters, allowing me far greater space to tell each story, and far greater depths to plumb for each artist covered. This also allowed me latitude to cover artists whose multifaceted careers defied summarization in two or three thousand words, and also artists who were somewhat better known—though still not exactly well known—than the average ones documented in Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll. In the introduction to that book, I lamented that space and balance considerations excluded chapters on some of my personal favorite cult rockers, specifically citing the Pretty Things, Tim Buckley, the Fugs, and the Bonzo Dog Band. To my enormous satisfaction, all four of those artists are included in this book.
The Pretty Things’ “Midnight to Six Man” was one of the greatest singles of the 1960s not to become a hit.
There are those rock fans, both in the above-ground media and subterranean fanzines and indie record stores, who would claim that there has been enough written about 1960s rock already. Empty nostalgia, they decry. The 1960s are over, and they didn’t change the world. Write about some new bands that really need the exposure, instead of retired or semi-retired dinosaurs. Stop living in the past. Crank up that drum ‘n’ bass.
Such critics are missing a couple of essential points. First, writing about a bygone era of popular music in fine detail is not necessarily arguing that new music should not be covered as well, or that music of the past is better or more valid than that of the present. More important, when you go down the ladder of rock history, past the Beatles and then the Kinks and then even the Velvet Underground, to the Pretty Things and Fred Neil and even further to Randy Holden, there are certainly few grounds for calling it an exercise in nostalgia. You can’t be nostalgic about music you didn’t hear, or barely heard, until 20 or 30 years after it was made. That goes for those who were old enough to have experienced the 1960s directly, but never had the opportunity to hear many great bands, or for those too young to even remember the 1960s at all, who first heard these artists long after their best records were issued.
Young and old alike are not being drawn to 1960s cult rockers by nostalgia for the era. They’re being drawn by the music, which has passed the test of great art and lasted. And they’re discovering the records and the stories behind them with the same kind of excited enthusiasm that listeners feel when they discover current acts. Vault-combers at Ace, Rhino, Sundazed, Distortions, and other labels are continuing to unearth forgotten or even newly discovered recordings from the time—some great, some indifferent, some lousy—even as you read this. Why is it, though, that this era in particular continues to inspire so much fanaticism?
In a 1987 issue of the fanzine Swellsville, Dave Beltane opened his review of a forgotten 1969 gem of an album by Judy Henske and Jerry Yester (see the chapter in Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll for further details) with an interesting observation: “Someday someone will have to do a case study on why the 1960s produced so many forgotten classic records, despite being the last era in which good music was constantly being created by those in the public eye.” Urban Spacemen & Wayfaring Strangers is not that case study, nor are its 18 chapters individual case studies. There are too many complex musical, social, and economic factors at work to answer that question in a few hundred pages, and the following profiles seek to celebrate the music rather than explicate its sociological context. There are some between-the-lines answers to those questions in these pages, and it might help to muse upon some possible forces at work before the journey begins.
The chief culprit—and I say this only half tongue-in-cheek—is our capitalistic economic system. Records are marketed, to a large degree, via radio airplay and other media exposure in television, videos, print reviews, the Internet, and films. In the 1960s, regional radio charts and reports, as well as nationwide industry charts, could greatly affect how many radio stations, stores, and distributors broadcast or sold a certain artist’s record. At any given time, not just the 1960s, there simply is not enough room on the airwaves, the charts, and the record racks to accommodate all of the records and artists making good music. Saturation airplay for masterpiece blockbusters by the Beatles, Stones, and the Who made it that much less likely you’d hear that album by the Fugs. It was not until the very end of the decade that FM radio took off, and it became easier to hear album-oriented, more alternative-minded artists; in the United Kingdom, there were far fewer radio stations of any kind than there were in the United States. Moreover, as we all know, decisions on what records to play and push are not always, and perhaps not often, based on their musical quality. That is why, even if you were listening to rock voraciously in the 1960s, you may have barely or never heard Kaleidoscope, Dino Valenti, or the Bonzo Dog Band.
There were other forces at work that ensured you never heard some of the other records described in this volume. One is regionalism. Some great British bands like the Pretty Things, the Poets, and the Creation never made it to the U.S. and never enjoyed radio or label support here, if their records even got released on these shores. Groups like the Rationals and Thee Midniters were pretty big in their hometowns, at a time when radio airplay was less homogenous across the country than it is now, but couldn’t get a national foothold due to weak distribution and other bad breaks. And at a time when the full-length album was just coming into its own as a vehicle for ambitious statements, it could be that all you heard of a group was its big hit single. This meant that numerous songs by great acts—such as the Left Banke, Bobby Fuller, the Beau Brummels, even a wild psychedelic artist like Arthur Brown who lucked into a fluke international hit—were barely known to most listeners. For those committed to hearing only non-mainstream stuff, college and noncommercial radio were in their infancy, and not nearly as much of a factor in the exposure of obscure music as they are today. Viewed from these angles, one is amazed not so much that so much fine music escaped notice, but that so much great music did achieve widespread notice on crassly commercial vehicles such as AM radio and prime-time variety shows.
The ultimate consequence of all this was that even the most dedicated listener could not possibly have heard all or most of the fine music being made at the time of its release. That’s true of music at any time in history, of course, which is why it takes a lifetime to catch up on goodies you missed from the past. The narrower and perhaps more interesting question becomes: why such an abundance of unheralded treasures specifically from the 1960s? There is an overwhelming interest in excavating rock from 1964-1969. There is not, not yet anyway, a correspondingly overwhelming interest in excavating rock from 1972-1975, or rock from 1984-1988.
The answer lies, I believe, not so much in superior skills and imagination of the musicians, as in an especially fertile confluence of styles and elements specific to the era. In 1964 and 1965, there were not one but two major upheavals in rock that were totally unexpected: the British Invasion of bands from the U.K., and the combining of folk and rock music into folk-rock. Folk music and British rock had barely been considered as influences by rock musicians prior to this; the arrival of these styles sparked a myriad of untapped possibilities. At the same time, soul music was peaking at Motown, Atlantic, and Stax; studio and instrument technology was drastically increasing the diversity of sounds that could be coaxed from electric guitars and keyboards; and songwriting was breaking into new subject matter that strayed far beyond romantic love. Non-musical movements infiltrated rock as well, with the drug culture influencing the course of psychedelia, and antiwar protests affecting the stances and songs of almost everyone who wanted to make a difference. Every juncture in time is surrounded by musical and social changes that affect the sounds of the era. In rock music, at no other time did such major and so many changes happen in such a short period of time as they did during the mid-to-late 1960s.
With the artists in Urban Spacemen & Wayfaring Strangers, this was reflected in an eclecticism that was willing to draw from almost anything. This was mirrored by the two songs honored by the title of this book. The Bonzo Dog Band had its one British hit with “I’m the Urban Spaceman,” mixing daft comedy, English vaudevillian instrumentation, and psychedelic imagery on a single produced by a pseudonymous Paul McCartney. “Wayfaring Stranger” was a traditional folk standard done by no fewer than three different artists in this book, all in radically different fashions: Dino Valenti did an intense acoustic folk troubadour version, the Rationals made it a garage-surf rock instrumental, and Tim Buckley gave it a sensitive folk-jazz-rock interpretation. (Another group that could have well qualified for this book, H. P. Lovecraft, did a psychedelic-tinged hard rock rendition.) The different ways these musicians treated their material was indicative of the unlimited sense of possibility felt throughout rock in the 1960s. Too, the very names of the songs are revealing of a recklessly pioneering sensibility. So many of the musicians in the 1960s were urban spacemen (or spacewomen) of sorts, committed to exploring the furthest reaches of space and the psyche, but also grounded in the gritty realism of the street and the city. Everyone in this book was a wayfaring stranger, investigating strange new avenues of musical experimentation, in an open-minded fashion that allowed them to wander into different alleys as the tides of their environment shifted.
The song that gave this book its name.
Documenting the courses of these wayfaring strangers leads to unsuspected detours and bypasses that might be similar to those undergone by the musicians way back when. Much of rock history, not to mention much history of all kinds, tends to retroactively classify performers into cubbyholes of genres and mini-genres, largely separate from each other’s spheres of influence. Some would say, for instance, that the Pretty Things and Fugs were in this corner as pre-punks; Kaleidoscope and Arthur Brown in that corner as weird psychedelicists; Bobby Fuller and the Left Banke over there as pure pop people; Dino Valenti and Fred Neil over thataway as singer-songwriters; and so on. There are those mainstream outlets that view the era solely in terms of its major star performers—again, the Beatles, the Stones, and so on—and dismiss those who didn’t get a wide audience as irrelevant or insignificant. In an equally misguided fashion, there are those who insist that only those performers who anticipated later punk and new wave sounds—usually the Velvet Underground, MC5, Stooges, Captain Beefheart, and some mid-1960s garage bands—are relevant in the modern age.
One of the rewards of doing a project such as this is that research exposes such stances for the artificial party lines they are. Yes, the Pretty Things were pre-punks; they also innovated the precise kind of psychedelic rock opera that many punks detest. Yes, Kaleidoscope did some weird psychedelic music, but it also did several varieties of folk-rock. Yes, the Pretty Things were scruffy rhythm and blues wildmen; they also gladly admit to being influenced by some performers, such as the Doors and the Fifth Dimension, that are trashed by many fanzines that exult the Pretty Things’ gospel. Yes, the Fugs were rabid anti-establishment comedians. They also worked with Harry Belafonte’s backup singers, recorded for Frank Sinatra’s label, and employed guitarists who were later integral to the most popular recordings by James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, and Carole King.
Similarly, innovations could be sparked by influences from the most unsuspected sources, sometimes transmitted from wavelengths totally outside of the rock ‘n’ roll arena. Thee Midniters played pounding garage punk on occasion, but also had horn arrangements inspired by the Jazz Crusaders. Giorgio Gomelsky remembers how his admiration of classical harpsichordist Wanda Landowska influenced his production of the Yardbirds’ first hit, “For Your Love.” The Fugs set poems by William Blake to song. Tim Buckley wrote the melody to “Hallucinations” after listening to an album of Moroccan street music. History is more complex than a convenient division of the good guys versus the bad ones, the right stylistic choices versus the wrong ones, and if the 1960s was about anything, it was about keeping your mind open to anyone and anything.
In a less contentious fashion, digging into these artists’ careers also reveals the relatively undocumented exchange of influences not only among themselves, but between them and much more famous acts. Arthur Brown believes the success of his first album helped fund the Who’s much more widely known Tommy. The members of Kaleidoscope see the possible effect of their world music sandwich on the Grateful Dead and, much later, Camper Van Beethoven, and note how Jimmy Page—who named Kaleidoscope as one of his favorite bands—used a violin bow technique on his electric guitar similar to the one they had employed. Randy Holden speculates on how his volume-smashing technology aroused the interest of Jimi Hendrix. Giorgio Gomelsky recalls how, in 1963, he worked on a treatment of a film for the Beatles with ideas that resurfaced in A Hard Day’s Night.
In addition, cult artists influenced each other, in ways they sometimes remain unaware of to this day. The Pretty Things, for instance, were virtually unknown in the United States, yet a couple of American musicians I interviewed could barely contain their enthusiasm for the group when its name came up in conversation. It also turned out that various people in the book knew and had even worked with others about whom I was writing. So it is that Arthur Brown talks about a collaboration on a “brain opera” with the Bonzo Dog Band; Larry Beckett, Tim Buckley’s lyricist, remembers how he and Tim were inspired by watching Fred Neil record; Cyrus Faryar excitedly recalls his associations with both Neil and Dino Valenti; George Gallacher of the Poets remembers being bowled over by the savage power of the Pretty Things at a London club gig, not suspecting that the Poets would be touring with the Pretty Things a year later. Such connections are not mere trivia, to be exclusively hoarded by record collectors who rarely venture into the sunlight. They are the connections that are the hidden lifeblood of rock history.
In doing a book such as this one, the writer becomes as much of a wayfaring stranger as the subjects in navigating the winding paths leading to interviews, and in conducting the interviews themselves. That began with the actual selection of who to include, which inevitably meant bypassing some worthy candidates and making extra-special efforts to include others. Even taken together with the 1960s artists profiled in Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll, the musicians featured in this volume by no means represent all of the overlooked rockers of the time worthy of examination, or even all of the best of them. My goal was to present a cross-section of many of the most interesting ones, varying in both style and level of recognition.
Thus you’ll find British Invasion bands, folk-rockers, psychedelic trailblazers, rock satirists, soul-rockers, pop-rockers, and producers. Some of them even had a huge hit single or two; some were briefly fairly successful album sellers; some are known mostly for the songs they wrote, covered with greater sales figures by others; some were big in their home cities, but not elsewhere; and some just weren’t big anyway, anyhow, anywhere. They are grouped into seven different sections in the book, but those are only meant as loose categories; the Fugs, Kaleidoscope, and the Beau Brummels could all fit into folk-rock almost as well as they fit into the areas to which they were assigned, for instance. Wherever they’re placed, they’re all underrated. I promise you.
As with Unknown Legends of Rock' ‘n’ 'Roll, I also decided to only include only acts that I was passionately curious about myself, regardless of the reputations of certain others among some critics and cultists. For that reason the Seeds, the Standells, the Silver Apples, Pearls Before Swine, Os Mutantes, the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, Roy Harper, Tim Hardin, and others—most of whom I quite like to some degree, some of whom I don’t like much at all—did not make the cut, the slack to be taken up, perhaps, by some future book or other writer. Some bands that I like quite a bit had such brief careers (the C. A. Quintet, J. K. & Co., Blackburn & Snow) that it would have been difficult to give them a chapter of the length accorded to all the ones in these pages. A few artists I would have liked dearly to include—crucial folk-rockers Jackie DeShannon and P. F. Sloan, and Roy Wood of the Move—did not respond to interview requests. Regretfully I left these artists out, as I felt firsthand perspective and memories essential to the work. The one case I violated this rule (other than for the artists now dead, in which case I interviewed close associates) was for Fred Neil, who has not done an interview in more than 30 years, and whom I was determined to spotlight, which I did with the help of several people who knew him and played on his records.
As with Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll, one of the most rewarding aspects of undertaking the project was the opportunity to gauge the reactions of artists to the belated acclaim for their achievements. As with Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll, this varied widely, from near-shock to polite contentment to indifference. Things were nonetheless somewhat different this time around. As any journalist can tell you, the difficulty of arranging an interview is directly proportional to the fame of the subject. Similarly, the enthusiasm of the interview subject for participating is directly proportional to his or her obscurity. The artists profiled in Urban Spacemen & Wayfaring Strangers were, if not household names, certainly better known on the average than the ones in Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll, and are not as easily flattered by the attention. All were well into middle age—a couple were senior citizens—and not necessarily interested in dwelling upon what happened 30 to 40 years ago. Some, indeed, are not particularly flattered that someone wishes to put them in a book in the first place.
Our conversations veered between congenial ease and, less frequently, inhibited tension. One musician clearly would have rather been undergoing chemotherapy than talking to almost anyone at almost any time about almost anything, and divulged bits about the past in occasional paragraph-long spurts that made me pray the tape didn’t need to be flipped over in the middle of a rare recollection. Others granted the interview with wary reluctance, but couldn’t shut up once the memories gained momentum. One key talk took nine months of back-and-forth to set up. Others were ready to start as soon as I introduced myself over the phone.
Impressions from records and album sleeves meant nothing. Arthur Brown, for example, might have been expected to be a hard case, judging from his image as a god-of-hellfire singing about devils and spontaneous apple creations. Not so; he invited me to his house immediately over the phone and, on the eve of a flight to Spain to play at a rock festival, welcomed me as he would a dear friend, the perfect host as he prepared health food snacks and went over his career in fond, exacting detail. The Pretty Things made their name as riot-inciting punks in the mid-1960s; guitarist Dick Taylor made sure my tea was hot as he spoke with me for a couple of hours in the band’s rehearsal space, although he had to drive back from London to the Isle of Wight that night. One interviewee was rumored to have earned millions from a particularly advantageous contractual settlement in the 1960s. Another was living on the dole in the United Kingdom, with an income of 77 pounds a week. For those connected to the Internet—a much more common situation than it had been even three years previously, when I was researching Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll—the email messages flew fast and furious, especially when it came to correcting or elaborating upon small but significant points regarding their careers.
A non-hit single taken from Arthur Brown’s only hit album.
Despite some initial reservations, however, those interviewed were usually quite willing to speak about their experiences. They became more willing, in many cases, when it became evident that the conversations would focus mostly upon their music, and not solely upon their only famous songs. That would seem like a given with a book such as this, but one has to remember that when these musicians were first emerging, what press attention there was usually focused on their lifestyles, likes and dislikes, and celebrity gossip, not their creative process. Almost all of them have been interviewed at various points over the last few decades. However, they have not often, or sometimes ever, had the opportunity to speak in depth about their recordings, their songwriting, their inspirations, and their vision. In most cases, the opportunity—even if it arrives 35 years after their recording debut—is almost always welcomed, and sometimes deeply appreciated. On occasion, as with Chris Darrow of Kaleidoscope, they were not only eager to talk about themselves, but have also developed a sense of how important it is to help make the impossibly complex and thrilling mosaic of rock history clearer as a whole.
That is not to say that they, and I, didn’t pass through some awkward moments as the scrutiny intensified. Careers in the music business, unfortunately, are rife with conflicts with record labels, managers, promoters, and, especially in band situations, other musicians. Accounts sometimes differed with those reported previously in other publications; sometimes accounts of key incidents even differed among different members of the same group. Some memories were particularly painful to rake over, as when they involved the death of a band mate or collaborator who happened to have also been a brother or best friend. When controversial issues were raised, particularly regarding the exits of some musicians from bands, or who was responsible for certain songs or productions that had been contested, the people’s voices would sometimes trail off or they’d mumble into their shirts. Time does not entirely heal all wounds.
A disadvantage of compiling a book like this is that memories have inevitably faded to some degree over the decades. An advantage, on the other hand, is that time has healed most wounds and given the artists a perspective on their work that they might not have had when they were in the middle of creating it. With few exceptions, they’re still creating it, whether performing live in bars and pubs, doing informal recording for small-label CDs, or even developing ideas and albums with hopes of making money and selling units. When I spoke to Willie Garcia of Thee Midniters, for example, he was finishing a CD, produced by David Hidalgo of Los Lobos, in the hopes of gaining more nationwide attention than he’s ever had. The Pretty Things find themselves more popular in the United States than they’ve ever been, and toured the country extensively in 1999—the first time their late-1960s lineup had made it over. Far from being embittered about not having been able to come over in the 1960s when the opportunity seemed obvious, they cheerfully figured it was better late than never.
Yet even when the musicians are embittered toward the music industry, those ill feelings rarely spill over to the fans who appreciate their work, even if it’s taken nearly forever for the records to find their most devoted audience. These artists know that it’s the music that counts from the 1960s, more than the psychedelic Fillmore posters that sell for absurdly high prices on the Internet, more than the tie-dye shirts or Beatle boots, more than the excessive drug-taking and passing fashion fads. The disappointments at not reaching more listeners, and in most cases not getting the chances to fulfill their maximum artistic potential, may never be alleviated. Great music endures indefinitely, however, no matter when it’s finally heard. It is that music and its creators’ voices that this book honors.
Richie Unterberger
San Francisco
Chapter 1: Made in Britain, Lost in America
In a decade marked by rapid and unexpected musical change, nothing changed rock as quickly and decisively as the British Invasion did. The massive influence of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and other major British bands such as the Who, Kinks, and Yardbirds is well known. For all the boatloads of groups who crossed the water to the United States, however, many remained behind on the British Isles. Even some that had hits in the United Kingdom were known in America only on a cult level, in an era when few shops stocked import singles and LPs. The members of one such cult band, the Who—who were barely known in the U.S. before 1967—would eventually make it over, build a following, and become superstars there as well as at home. Most cult bands did not even make it over (in the 1960s, at least), and are still cult bands. At least their albums are easier to find now, usually on CD, than they were when the bands were in their heyday.
The Pretty Things and the Poets are filed pretty close to each other in the album racks, but might seem at first glance to be opposites. The Pretties were known for both torrential Rolling Stones-styled R&B and psychedelic rock operas; the Poets specialized in delicate, almost folky ballads. The Pretty Things had a few big and small British hits; the Poets had one small British hit and nothing else chartwise. The Pretty Things are still going in 2013, and indeed might be better known in the United States now than they’ve ever been; the Poets only put out a half dozen singles, and by 1967 had changed personnel so many times as to become unrecognizable. The Pretty Things were from London; the Poets from Scotland. And so on.