Cutting a swath through the L.A. sound with P.F. Sloan and his pals
by Kim Cooper

The “P.F.” in P. F. Sloan stands for the Phillip and for nickname Flip, fittingly embodying the formal and the goofball casual in an identity and career that would be rife with contradiction. Briefly with partner Steve Barri (née Lipkin) among the most successful American pop songwriters, by the late sixties P.F. would have effectively vanished, his absence noted by an especially lovely Jimmy Webb ballad that bears Sloan’s name. Full of mysticism, anger, and strangeness, the P.F. Sloan story is one that needs to be told. And yes, doubters, there is a bubblegum connection—two, in fact.

New York-born Flip was blessed with smart parents: they moved to Los Angeles when he was five. By twelve the sharp, ambitious kid had wangled a contract with Aladdin Records. But nothing much came of early singles “All I Want is Loving” b/w “Little Girl in the Cabin” (Aladdin 3461, 1959) and “If You Believe In Me” b/w “She’s My Girl” (Mart 802, 1960), and we hear nothing of him for several years.

By 1963 he’d hooked up with Steve Barri, and under Gary Usher’s supervision they provided enthusiastic back-up vocals for Jan & Dean and wrote some of that group’s most memorable material, including the immortal, Rudi Gernreich-inspired “One-Piece Topless Bathing Suit.” A fun Baggys album was released on Imperial in 1964 (Tell 'Em I'm Surfin' LP-9270/LP-12270). Other surfsploitation releases with Sloan-Barri-Usher involvement included The Rincon Surfside Band’s The Surfing Song Book (Dunhill LP 50001, 1965) and Willie and the Wheels’ Surfin’ Song Book (RCA LP 70044, 1965). RCA was presumably too cheap to pay for that final G.

As Jan & Dean’s co-manager (with Herb Alpert), Lou Adler had had ample opportunity to see the Fantastic Baggys in action. Favorably impressed, when he started Dunhill Productions in ’64 he hired them to write for his Trousdale Songs publishing company and produce acts for the label. Trousdale immediately began racking up hits, among them “Secret Agent Man” (#3) for Johnny Rivers and ex-New Christy Minstrel Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction” (#1, and the record that knocked “Help” off the top spot and kept “Like a Rolling Stone” from reaching it). Sloan’s first solo album also dates from ’65, Songs of Our Times (Dunhill 50004). The powerful single “Sins of the Family” (about a girl’s hopelessness in the face of her parents’ depravity) reached #87 on the Billboard charts

Sloan and Barri had been asked by Adler to write some songs in the trendy folk-rock idiom. They seem to have had no problem in shifting from beach themes to protest, love and pop psychology, and Sloan was soon out-Dylaning the kid from Hibbing. This early folk-rock material would be released as the album Where Were You When I Needed You by the non-existent band the Grass Roots. The odd cover art showing an old chair in a clump of hay should have been a tip off that something wasn’t kosher, but the credulous listener might be snowed by Andy Wickham’s rambling liner notes about the band and their Sunset Strip buddies. According to fantasist Wickham, the Grass Roots were “four Johnny Folk’n’rolls who don’t pretend to be anything else. They... have long, Dickensian haircuts and they blast up and down our hallowed strip on gleaming motor-bikes with long-haired birdies wooing and cooing on the back. They probably live high in the Hollywood hills in a castle —a mode of living which the Folk-n-roll set finds highly fashionable at the moment.” And where was this mythic band discovered? Why, in “a bawdy, boisterous, smoke-filled beat parlor called ‘The Trip,’” although they’d recently moved to the Whisky since The Trip started booking bands in matching suits.

The first song recorded for the Grass Roots project was the title track, with lead vocals by Sloan. When a local radio station started spinning the promo 45, Dunhill began looking for a band to “be” the Grass Roots. Bubblegum alert! Sloan suggested San Mateo’s Bedouins, and their singer Bill Fulton went into the studio to record a new lead vocal to replace Sloan’s. At first the Bedouins were willing to be manipulated into a calculated career, but when they were told that single #2, a cover of Dylan’s “Ballad of A Thin Man,” was to be recorded Byrds-style with Fulton backed by studio musicians, they were irked. When “Ballad,” released in October ’65, failed to break the Top 100, the Bedouins bowed out and went home to the Bay Area, where they changed names again to briefly become the Unquenchable Thirst, then splintered. Fulton went on to play in Tower of Power for many years. Meanwhile, Sloan and Barri continued working on Grass Roots material, and the Where Were You album was released without an actual band yet under contract. It didn’t chart, although the title song hit #28.

The debut album sounds like what it is: half strong songwriter’s demos helped along by a crack session team and Bones Howe’s co-engineering, half garagey actual Bedouins recordings. The seven Sloan-Barri originals are insidiously catchy, and include the soon-to-be-Turtles-classic “You Baby.” Somewhat uninspired covers (“I Am a Rock,” “You Didn’t Have To Be So Nice”) fill out the grooves and suggest that there was some rush to complete the album.

When a Los Angeles band called the 13th Floor send their demo tape in to Dunhill, they certainly didn’t expect the Eliza Doolittle treatment they ultimately received. But ambition will make boys do strange things, and this gamble paid off handsomely for the former 13th Floor. Warren Entner, Creed Bratton, Rob Grill and Rick Coonce were soon transformed into the Grass Roots, and while it’s unclear how much they actually played on their records, this is the band credited with a terrific adaptation of the Rokes’ Italian hit "Piangi Con Me" as “Let’s Live for Today” that broke the Top 10 in ’67. Contrived or not, the album of this name is one of the gems of the folk-rock era, and deservedly launched a fairly successful career for the Grass Roots, first with Sloan-Barri songs and later with more soulful material from the band and other outside writers.

Sloan recorded a second solo alum in 1966 Twelve More Times (Dunhill LP 50007), containing the excellent “Halloween Mary” and “Upon a Painted Ocean.” Around this time Lou Adler sold the label and put his energies into the Monterey Pop Festival, and the following year Phil returned to New York. Although he would release two more albums (1968’s Measure of Pleasure on Atco 268 and Raised on Records, Mums 31260, 1972), Sloan was beginning to retreat from the commercial world. His partnership with Steve Barri lapsed, and Barri went on to be a major producer on his own.

Although Steve Barri left production in the seventies in order to guide the careers of artists of little interest to our readers (trust me, we’re talking Commodores), he wasn’t yet finished overseeing obscenely catchy hits. It was under Barri’s guidance that Tommy Roe returned to the charts in 1969 with “Jam Up and Jelly Tight” and the delightful “Dizzy.” He was also responsible for "Billy Don't Be A Hero" by Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods and for "Don't Pull Your Love" for Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds. Barri was also the person called in when the powers that be decided that chimp band The Evolution Revolution needed a hit: Barri gave the critters an old Grass Roots demo “Sha-La Love You,” and the benefit of his production savvy for this one song. Barri returned to production in the late eighties in partnership with session guitarist Tony Peluso (the man who played that insane solo in the Carpenters’ “Goodbye to Love”), and scored Top 20 hits for Animotion and the Triplets.

As for P.F. Sloan, after pursuing various spiritual paths, in recent years he’s made tentative motions towards reviving his career. There was some material recorded with the Posies, a few showcase gigs in Los Angeles and elsewhere, and even an updated version of “Eve of Destruction.” So don’t close the book on him just yet.