Bubble Entendres
by Kim Cooper & David Smay

Once upon a time the AM radio dial grew sticky with a sickly sweet confectionery masquerading as rock ‘n’ roll. DJs, promotion men, executives and songwriters greedily conspired to tap the vast and largely untouched pre-pubescent music market, and the results were more successful—commercially and artistically—than they could have hoped. It didn’t take much to entice the tykes who’d been spending their allowances on comic books, candy bars, and baseball cards into throwing some of that cabbage towards vinyl 45s. Most homes had turntables, and anyone with an older sibling already thought buying records was a cool thing to do. All that was required was that rock be revamped into something that would appeal to this new market. Tone down the lovey-dovey stuff and the blatant aggression, and substitute lyrics that were just half a step away from kindergarten. Nursery rhymes are good, so are repetitions of baby-talk phrases. Kids love to dance, so give ‘em a backbeat that even the klutziest infant can’t miss. And churn it all out at lightening speed direct from the Bubblegum Factory—young songwriters knocking out lyrics to five songs before lunch, interchangeable singers and backing musicians racing into the studio, visionary producers stage-managing the whole shebang, while the kids wait eagerly for the next kinderpop sensation to hit the airwaves.

Did we say once upon a time? This formula was true in 1968, and as we go to press in 2001 it remains a very good description of the machinations behind many of the top charting acts worldwide. The twenty-first century version may be sexier—kids grow up faster nowadays, after all—but it’s still the same old gumball when you cut it open.

Bubblegum Is…

Defining bubblegum is a tricky proposition as the term variously describes: (1) the classic bubblegum era from 1967-1972; (2) disposable pop music; (3) pop music contrived and marketed to appeal to pre-teens; (4) pop music produced in an assembly line process—driven by producers and using faceless singers (5) pop music with that intangible, upbeat "bubblegum" sound.

A very strict definition of bubblegum insists on faceless bands, either shifting studio groups or music fronted by a television presence (usually a cartoon) with, as Bill Pitzonka describes it, "a contrived innocence that transcends its contrivance" This is the music of the Kasenetz and Katz bands (Ohio Express, 1910 Fruitgum Co.) and cartoon groups like the Archies within the first era of bubblegum chart dominance.

In this book we take a broader approach to the subject. Without compromising our core notions of what constitutes "Bubblegum," we investigate any number of borderline cases with varying degrees of gumminess. Sometimes we applied a diagnostic model to the question, charting how many symptoms a band presents. Was the group assembled by an outside producer? Did the producer fire the lead singer, or steal the lead singer and fire the group? Was the group dependent on outside songwriters/producers for its singles? Was the music produced by a faceless studio group? Were cartoons or a live TV show used to sell the music? Are the lyrics kid-slanted, referencing children's games, nursery rhymes, candy? Were teenagers themselves making the music? Was it marketed to pre-teens? Does the music have that sweet, sunny, upbeat danceable, entirely subjective bubblegum sound? Were canonical bubblegum creators involved? No single factor defines bubblegum—though that slippery, indefensibly tautological, “Bubblegum Sound" comes close.

We also contend that a band can be bubblegum for part of their career. The Monkees’ first two albums satisfy every bubblegum criteria we've got (though some would dispute that assessment: see Gary Pig Gold’s and Carl Cafarelli’s chapter). After the Headquarters coup, they emerged as a middling folk/country rock band. Then with the Changes album they fell squarely back into bubblegum mode. Paul Revere & the Raiders clearly begin at the other end of the spectrum as a hard-rocking garage band. After pulling in some Brill Building songwriting (Mann/Weil), outside production (Terry Melcher), TV show stardom (Where the Action Is), cartoony costumes and studio musicians (their last few albums) then you've got a band moving into bubblegum. When a group starts cutting ads for Mattel's groovy mod Barbie doll, Swingy, then you have to assume they're seriously catering to a pre-teen fan base. Or consider Tommy James’ career arc. He launched with a crude frat rocker ("Hanky Panky"), turned out a stretch of essential bubblegum hits with Ritchie Cordell and Bo Gentry ("I Think We're Alone Now," "Mirage"), after which Tommy resumed control of his career and charted with the pop-psych of "Crimson and Clover" and such barely-gum as "Sweet Cherry Wine." Finally, look at how closely early Jackson 5 songs are modeled after bubblegum, with recess-ready lyrics on songs like "ABC," “2-4-6-8,” “Ready Or Not Here I Come,” "Stop the Love You Save" and "Sugar Daddy" (the all important "Sugar/Candy" title giveaway). Factor in a Saturday morning cartoon and the usual hallmarks Motown shared with bubblegum production (outside producers, svengali lead, studio musicians) which indicate that we should consider the J-5 as bubblegum born.

Clearly we’ve got a flexible notion of what makes bubblegum, but we’ll make it easy on you from the start and tell you what isn’t included. Teen idols aren’t bubblegum. Not usually anyway. Sometimes Boy Bands are bubblegum, but definitely not when they’re crooning a ballad. Shaun Cassidy isn’t bubblegum, but David Cassidy is, particularly when fronting the Partridge Family. Bobby Sherman’s choker made our Bubblegum 100, but he just squeaked in since he’s really a Teen Idol from the High Bubblegum era. That string of seventies Bathos-Pop one-shots? Not Bubblegum: “Billy Don’t Be a Hero,” “The Night Chicago Died,” “One Tin Soldier,” “Shannon,” “Wild Fire.”

We’re interested in the causes of bubblegum too. But instead of asking why bubblegum happens, it’s almost more interesting to ask why bubblegum isn’t the norm. If it works at all, why doesn’t it always work? One simple answer is that it runs in cycles. Whenever rock abandons its mandate for fun, danceable bubblegum (or its near equivalents) will fill that gap. When rock went psychedelic and larded down with social statement, up popped bubblegum. It happened in the nineties again after a stretch of “complaint rock.” There will always be a market for 12-year-old girls who wanna dance. When disco was around the need for bubblegum wasn’t as acute. Similarly, the early new wave days of MTV scratched the bubblegum itch nicely and broke out genres of music that weren’t getting radio play. Notably, most of the icons of the eighties worked the dance-pop vein: Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince. Michael and Madonna were particularly adept at selling their music to pre-teens.

Bubblegum Precursors

Humorous songs have always been a part of the popular folk tradition. Although superficially aimed at a juvenile audience, adults take different pleasures from wacky numbers ripe with double entendres and inspired nonsense. In some respects, bubblegum fits tidily in the line of American novelty music that proceeds from “I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream For Ice Cream” (1927) to “(Boop-Boop Dit-em Dat-em What-em Choo!) Three Little Fishies (Itty Bitty Poo)” (1939) to “Mairzy Doats” (1943) to “Surfin’ Bird” (1963). There was even an obscure strain of Doo-Wop music that specialized in adapting nursery rhymes and fairy tales to the style, apparently for a teen audience.

Apply the ten commandments of gum to helium-toned cartoon sensations Alvin & the Chipmunks, and they are revealed as a quintessential bubblegum act, emerging a full decade before the style exploded. Fuse the goofball lyricism of the novelty song with the deliberate prurience of under-the-counter “blue” party recordings like Doug Clark’s “Hot Nuts,” bring it all up to date with electric guitars and psychedelic imagery, and you’ve got a recipe for a teenybopper treat so tasty we had to write a book about it.

Other important precursors to bubblegum include the Brill Building, the British Invasion, the West Coast Sound, Motown and garage rock—all major commercial genres of the sixties. Just to cite one group, every major figure associated with the Archies graduated from the Brill Building scene (with honors): Don Kirshner, Jeff Barry, Ron Dante, Andy Kim, and Toni Wine.

Listening to Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich's recordings as the Raindrops, you can actually catch a whiff of the bubblegum to come. It's no coincidence that a 13-year-old Tommy James flipped over a Raindrops single and recorded his first hit, "Hanky Panky." Jeff Barry always had a knack for the rhythm track, and was one of the earliest pop producers to assimilate the backbeat coming out of Motown and Memphis. Motown returned the favor by launching the Jackson 5 in 1970, in belated response to bubblegum's success. Dan Penn in Memphis was more prescient when he decided he could make his own Monkees and had the Box Tops on the charts by 1967.

The British Invasion has been rewritten to emphasize the achievements of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, the Who and the Kinks (all loitering around the Olympian heights bumming fags off each other) while the Zombies, Hollies and Yardbirds are forced to mingle on the other side of the velvet rope with the record geeks that adore them. The top-selling acts of the British Invasion, however, were the Beatles, Dave Clark Five and Herman's Hermits. It really was music business as usual, and Herman's Hermits clearly anticipate bubblegum with their 16-year-old lead singer, their goofball antics on Shindig!, their movie Hold On, their dependence on sing-song kid-rhyme songs like “I’m Henry the VIII, I Am,” and the ace songsmithery of Graham Gouldman and P.F. Sloan.

Charting the history of just one British Invasion band like Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders turns up a mind-bending intersection of influences. With Wayne up front the band first hit with the frat-hard, beat-happy "Game of Love"—a song that wouldn't have sounded out of place on a Swingin' Medallions or Gentrys single. Ditching Wayne, the band hit internationally with "A Groovy Kind of Love," written by two nice Jewish girls from New York, Carol Bayer and Toni Wine. That's the same Toni Wine who sings on "Sugar, Sugar." The same Toni Wine who recorded a demo with Jeff Barry's ex-wife and writing partner, Ellie Greenwich, that became "Candida" and launched Tony Orlando & Dawn. Meanwhile, back with the Mindbenders, band-member Eric Stewart asked his old mate Graham Gouldman to tour with the band and write a few songs (including the lovely "Pamela Pamela") for them. Graham obliged for a bit before drifting off, signing a contract with Kasenetz and Katz and putting out "Sausalito" under the Ohio Express name. Toni later went on to marry legendary soul producer Chips Moman — in whose studio Dan Penn cut those Box Tops hits. After his stint with K&K, Graham and Eric formed 10cc with Lol Creme and Kevin Godley. That would be the Godley & Creme who directed all those groundbreaking Duran Duran videos.

The garage band element in bubblegum has been much remarked on, and the links are fairly obvious. Many of the early K&K hits are more garage rock than bubblegum—"Beg, Borrow and Steal," “Little Bit of Soul,” "Down at Lulu's"—and you can easily compile a list of Kasenetz and Katz album filler that steals gleefully from "Louie, Louie." The Strangeloves represent another example of a fabricated studio group with a hard rocking garage sound and extravagantly false backstory (you'll see ex -Strangelove Richard Gotterhrer's name recur thoughout this book). The Shadows of Knight turned to Kasenetz and Katz for the blistering “Shake,” and Paul Revere & the Raiders learned to leaven their hard and heavy sounds with marshmallow. Joey Levine is the key figure here, writing “Try It” for the Standells before the Ohio Express made him famous, and also working with Artie & Kris Resnick in the Third Rail. In fact, the Nuggets box set is riddled with bubblegum stalwarts; Kris Resnick has nearly as many songwriting credits as Elias McDaniel.

While many of the most prominent bubblegum creators worked out of New York (including the Buddah/K&K circle, Jeff Barry/Archies team and Tommy James with Ritchie Cordell and Bo Gentry), the West Coast Sound also profoundly influenced bubblegum music. Gary Usher's many knockoff studio cash-in groups like the Hondells, the Revells, and the Kickstands laid the groundwork for Los Angeles Bubblegum. The great songwriting team of P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri created the ultimate faceless folk rock studio group with the first Grass Roots record, preceding that accomplishment with their Beach Boys-inspired Fantastic Baggys. As an in-house producer at Dunhill/ABC Steve Barri went on to produce important bubblegum contributions from Tommy Roe and Lancelot Link and the Evolution Revolution. While Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart are strongly associated with West Coast Bubblegum where they made their mark with the Monkees, both had roots at the Brill Building.

The Hitmakers

Songwriter-producers make bubblegum music, guiding their sounds through the capable talents of session singes and studio musicians. Bubblegum thrives in a studio culture that's rarely exposed, but we reveal its busy beehive of professionalism. Here outrageous commercialization balances with an undiluted joy in music. It's doubtful recording sessions get any more fun than the one that produced "Sugar, Sugar."

Why This Book? Why Now?

Loathed by the contemporary critical establishment (except Lester Bangs and a few other open-minded scribes), and quickly dismissed by its maturing audience, bubblegum receded into history without ever being properly understood. If you want to learn about the Buddah label you’re better off looking to the business section of the trades than to Rolling Stone, Cheetah or Crawdaddy. Hip editors seemed to believe that if they just ignored these insolent sounds, maybe they’d go away. Besides, the readers of semi-underground rock journals weren’t at all interested in this contrived pabulum. It’s only in retrospect, as the pop smarts, garage rock associations, lyrical excess and sheer sonic glory of bubblegum are revealed to less reactionary ears that the need for a full critical and historical accounting becomes clear.

But it’s not all about the sixties. Bubblegum is a viral vein that’s flowed stickily through the body of rock for more than thirty years. Sometimes it hides out for years at a time, but it’s always lurking, waiting for the perfect confluence of a generation, a musical phenomenon, a few inspired producer-types and a little sprinkling of Pixy Stick dust to again explode across the charts.

The late nineties saw the biggest bubblegum explosion since 1968, accompanied by a backlash that’s all too familiar. But even without the luxury of temporal distance, there are a few critics who are already looking objectively at the Britney era, picking out the gems from a sea of manufactured fluff. It seems obvious that bubblegum is here to stay, and the least we can do is to try to understand it.

But before we can understand bubblegum, we’d better get the story straight. There's a tremendous amount of false and misleading factual information about bubblegum music floating around that needs to be corrected. Since the albums themselves rarely credited the actual singers and musicians, myths have perpetuated until they’re accepted as fact, and inferences are drawn which badly distort the story of the music. While we are overwhelmingly fond of Joey Levine's songwriting, paint-peeling nasality and ubiquity on K&K product, it needs to be cleared up that he never sang lead on any 1910 Fruitgum Co. songs—Mark Gutkowski (usually) did. And while Ellie Greenwich certainly deserves her Hall of Fame songwriting status, she never wrote for the Archies—at most she sang a few background vocals. Toni Wine sang on the second and third Archies albums (Everything’s Archie—later retitled Sugar, Sugar—and Jingle, Jangle). That’s Toni’s glorious lead on the single “Jingle, Jangle,” but another singer, Donna Marie, dueted with Ron on “Who’s Your Baby” and “Together We Two.”

Critical Thought and Reevaluation

There’s no putdown in the critic’s arsenal more dismissive, or easy, than “bubblegum.” To zap a performer with this particular insult is to brand him as a fake, a manufactured morsel aimed directly at the gullet of the least hip consumer. The artist is judged by his fanbase, and most six-year-olds are distinctly lacking in street cred.

Bubblegum offends the myth of Rock as an oppositional, “outsider” cultural force. To its detractors, bubblegum is read as an “inside” music—although in truth much bubblegum music came out on small independent labels—as opposed to the edgier sounds of the accepted underground. The major labels did a great job of selling their product as packaged rebellion, and the late sixties’ fanzines concurred. It was only when they overplayed their hand (“The Man Can’t Bust Our Music,” the Boston Sound debacle, overpromoting Moby Grape) that the pseudo-hipsters rejected these hairy offerings.

Rock criticism, born of and beholden to the sixties, stumbles badly when confronted with music produced outside of its short set of registered myths. Session singers? Studio musicians? That’s not rock and roll! Except for Motown. And Stax. And the Beach Boys and portions of the Byrds’ career. And, retroactively, disco. And Dusty in Memphis. And Richard Davis’ sublime bass work on Astral Weeks.

We think it’s time to retire this folkie stab at a false authenticity. We’re not immune to the allure of the Romantic Artist, nor have we traded our Townes Van Zandt collections for BSB memorabilia. But this myth of the Self Contained Band (beginning with the Beatles) and its offspring—Anarchist Gangs (Clash, Mekons), Artist Collectives (Can, the Band at Big Pink), Populist Unions (Bruce & the E-Street Band, Fugazi)—breeds in the ripe compost of abandoned lefty utopias. It’s no measure of the music.

“Those who believe [Max Martin’s]songs will fast-fade into oblivion should forget Paula Abdul and the Bay City Rollers and ponder the gaudy durability of Abba. They should wonder whether in 1968 Kasenetz & Katz themselves were certain that the Ohio Express's "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy" would be remembered longer than anything ever recorded by Rhinoceros or the Electric Flag.” (Robert Christgau, Pazz & Jop Poll, The Village Voice, February 2000)

One thing about six-year-olds, though: they know what they like. Little kids like great hooks, interesting vocal styles, seamless arrangements. They like to dance. Nothing pretentious or self-important will do when the audience has a two-minute attention span and miniscule discretionary income. And so the bubblegum hits still sound great today, where much that was critically acclaimed in the same period lacks any real distinction.

Now you’d think we couldn’t exploit one acrid jot of Joe Carducci’s opus/rant Rock and the Pop Narcotic. And while we don’t share Joe’s zeal for Deuterium Heaviness nor his ripe disdain for pop’s froth, we want to reiterate his simple question: “What does it have to do with the music?” Would an anthropologist from Mars care that Them’s “I Can Only Give You Everything” was written by somebody other than Van Morrison—Phil Coulter, no less, who later co-wrote “Saturday Night” for the Bay City Rollers—and performed by session musicians? Could this Martian field scientist spot the “authentic” song among the Yardbirds’ “Heart Full of Soul,” Manfred Mann’s “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” and the Animals’ “We’ve Got To Get Out Of This Place”? Can you? It’s a mug’s game, of course, because while those bands recorded the songs, they were all written by professional songwriters. And, what does it have to do with the music? Is it inauthentic for Roger Daltry to sing Pete Townshend’s lyrics? For Eric Clapton to play guitar on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”? It’s not that these questions are insignificant—it’s how you weigh that significance.

To borrow another critic’s stance, consider Simon Reynolds’ contention in Generation Ecstasy that rave culture thrives on functional music (i.e., House/Techno, et al.), which needs to be judged in its proper context (on the dance floor, on drugs) rather insisting on Rockist song form, lyrical analysis and Adherence To Rock Orthodoxy. Bubblegum, like disco, like porn, serves a utilitarian function—in bubblegum’s case the simple, yet infinitely difficult to create, ecstasy of pop release. As Shelly Kidd notes (in “Thoughts on Tommy Roe…”) this emotional release is built into the structure of the song itself , and is rarely in the lyrics—though bubblegum lyrics are a rich source of perverse fascination in themselves. Like every other dance music, bubblegum is functional and ecstatic—just substitute raging hormones for MDMA. Bubblegum is capitalism’s gift to puberty.

Another hurdle to bubblegum’s critical acceptance is its blatant money-grubbing. The very notion that you can package and sell pop music bliss offends anyone invested in handcrafted cultural artifacts. But we're talking about nothing less than the pursuit of the perfect pop song. Manufactured? Sure. Just like Casablanca, Ford Mustangs, the Fender Stratocaster, or Pee Wee's Playhouse. There's genius to be had off the assembly line.

The sixties was the Pop Decade, with music and the visual arts developing highly refined shorthand styles, until the product became like a billboard signifying the essence of the thing. Painters Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol drew on advertising imagery to give their canvases lowbrow pizzazz which was immediately familiar. The ad execs had already made sure the designs would appeal—the artists just appropriated a select set of subjects, celebrated them as if they were crucially important, and waited for their audacity to raise a stink.

Mass-production could be viewed as the enemy, or it could be archly embraced. Instead of representing the artist’s deepest thoughts and feelings, Pop Art played it all cool—feelings are for drips. It’s all about craft, high gloss, perfection, and the knowing wink. West Coast sculptors subscribed to the finish-fetish, adapting kar kulture techniques to make shiny smooth objects that gleamed like cherry cars or surfboards. The eye just wafts all the way over and never catches on the slightest flaw, which is how bubblegum acts on the ear. But this kind of perfection just looks easy—you have to paint a thousand coats over an exquisitely crafted form to achieve that kind of finish.

We want to make a distinction between Artistic Expression and artful expressions. Put aside your received notions of what music should mean and consider how it’s made, then delight like the pop hook slut you are in pure sonic pleasure. Take off those blinders blocking out music that doesn’t slot neatly with the Autonomous Band Myth, and reconsider what you know with bubblegum’s rosy lenses in place. The Sex Pistols, Madonna, the Byrds, Abba, Disco, Studio One, Hip Hop all start to look different when you stop looking for the Rock and Roll in their music and consider the Bubblegum in their method.

Among other things, you ought to come away from this book with some open questions about the Sex Pistols and the Box Tops. In The Great Rock and Roll Swindle, Malcolm McLaren contends that the Pistols were a brilliant subversion of the manufactured pop group, right down to their hand-picked singer and their publicity-generating TV appearances. How do you reconcile that with “Holidays in the Sun” or “Bodies”? There’s a measure of bullshit in Malcolm’s assertion. But is that because the Pistols transcended or epitomized their manager’s strategy? The Box Tops story, however, practically defines bubblegum. Dan Penn aspired to make a dixie-fried Monkees. He found a teenage group, fired their lead singer, and replaced him with Alex Chilton. Then he wound up backing Chilton with local session musicians, and sending the rest of the band out on the road. Even the Box Tops’ name alludes to bubblegum’s preferred medium—cereal boxes. Everything about the Box Tops is bubblegum except their music. It’s pop, but it’s much closer to the grittier blue-eyed soul of the Rascals than the Archies. On the one hand, you’ve got the band credited with destroying soul-less corporate rock using the bubblegum blueprint as their weapon of choice. On the other you’ve got all the ingredients of bubblegum cooked together and coming out like a BBQ pork sandwich. Calling bubblegum formulaic doesn’t seem to explain anything at all.

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We set out to comprehensively chronicle the first great bubblegum era from the late sixties through the early seventies, and then stretch that concept right onto the set of Total Request Live. So we’ve written a history. But we also made a space in this book where the imagination could respond to bubblegum’s provcations and contradictions. In our fantasy section we let down our ids. We allow the subtext to emerge and explore the dark side of pink. It is here that we watch the splendor of a divine hand smoothing David Cassidy’s hair gently into place.

Bubblegum has insidiously worked its way into plenty of ostensibly hipper genres, and is at the core of many of the best songs in new wave, pop-punk and indie-pop. From the Ramones, Blondie and Talking Heads in ‘70s New York to Scotland’s Rezillos, Bow Wow Wow, the Go-Go’s, the Pooh Sticks, Redd Kross, Jellyfish, Shonen Knife and the Groovie Ghoulies, the bubblegum roadmap has brought a lot of pleasure to people who never even realized they were listening to it.

Oh, who was who did that "Yummy Yummy"? The Ohio Express? Lemon Pipers, although they were sort of at the psychedelic end of bubble gum. "Mellow Yellow" meets a “Quick Joey Small” or "Mony Mony" meets almost anything by the early Troggs. You know, it transcends or descends below all expectations and thus it comes out in another dimension somewhere. It goes faster than the speed of light ale and bursts through into the banal zone. I have a huge debt to bubblegum music. I love it. – Andy Partridge, XTC