Richard Gotterher and the Art of the Instant Record

Richard Gotterher and the Art of the Instant Record
by Keith Bearden

Almost everyone can name a watershed musical moment in their life.  I’ve heard stories from friends of first becoming sexually aroused listening to Aerosmith’s "Walk This Way," or deciding to drop out of school after hearing the first Stooges record.  The moment that redefined my life and musical tastes was catching the first set of "New Wave" records to come out of New York City in 1977.  They had the exuberance, beat, and sing-along melodies of stuff I had loved on the oldies station, but with an anger, world-weariness and sick humor totally appropriate in the styleless, decadent and lazy years following the ’60s "revolution." It made me fully acknowledge what I had always suspected: I was not "normal," I was not "mellow" and I was not "cool."  I did not fit in and now I had music for and by other people who didn’t fit in either.  It was at this point that music became a therapist, a friend, and a community by proxy in the remaining decade until I was able to bust out of my stunted suburban existence.  

As I studied and memorized the jackets of my favorite vinyl companions over the next few years, I noticed a familiar name popping up in the production credits: Richard Gotterher.  Soon, anything with his name on the back became an automatic purchase, grooves unheard.  Like Phil Spector, anything with Gotterher’s touch mandated at least one listen.

Like many involved with the new wave movement, Gotterher’s roots lie in studio pop bands of the ’60s.  He, along with producing/writing partners Bob Feldman and Jerry Goldstein, created the ruse that was the Strangeloves, posing as three independently wealthy Australian sheep farmers who moonlighted as musicians.  They hoodwinked enough American teens with their phony story, "Aboriginal" drums and cheap Beatle wigs in 1965 to send "I Want Candy" to number 11 on the national charts.  If only for that one song, the Strangeloves are worthy of discussion.  "I Want Candy" is a revelation; a Bo Diddley jungle beat, jazzy guitar line, and massed, aharmonious male vocals sounding like a fraternity bash at its drunken pinnacle—all bathed in enough reverb to make it sound like the first live simulcast from the moon.  

Bow Wow Wow’s 1983 version may be more familiar, but the Strangeloves’ original is the one that gets under your skin.  Two more Top 40 hits followed —"Cara-Lin," later covered by the Fleshtones, and "Night Time," redone by Iggy Pop, the Nomads and even Joe Jackson (as the theme to a Miller beer commercial!).  Like the Shadows of Knight, the Strangeloves pre-dated the term “Bubblegum Rock,” and their heavier sound and seemingly more authentic garage band persona have saved them from being lumped in (and berated) with other studio pop bands of the era.  Of course, the history of rock ‘n’ roll is a history of "fake" studio bands, and many hit songs of numerous "real" groups (Byrds, Beach Boys,) were played partially by for-hire session men (but that is for a whole ‘nother book).

Many persons involved in the 1960s NYC studio pop hit factory later worked with the explosion of ’70s pop/rock talent that fell under the tag of "New Wave."  Buddah Records publicist Marty Thau managed or produced the New York Dolls, the Real Kids, Suicide and the Fleshtones, to name a few.  Tommy James/ Crazy Elephant/ 1910 Fruitgum Company songwriter and musician Ritchie Cordell channeled Joan Jett’s talents into the stuff of ’80s Top 40 success.  But it was Gotterher’s "Instant Records"—his ’70s production company: he recorded LPs in an average of four weeks as opposed to the months or even years common during the era—that clarified the link between new wave and its ’50s/’60s influences like no other.  He helped Blondie sound less like a Soho loft garage band and more like the mutant Girl Group they wanted to be.  His work with Robert Gordon and Link Wray proved to post-Woodstock hipsters that “oldies” could be as valid as the Ramones.  Marshall Crenshaw’s classic debut LP, Pearl Harbor’s woefully underrated solo work, The Go-Go’s’ Beauty and the Beat—all superb pop music that will forever define an era, a genre and the artists that made them.  All the product of Gotterher’s pop sensibilities.  

Still producing records occasionally, Richard Gotterher is currently the CEO of The Orchard (www.theorchard.com) a web-based independent music distributor.  We met over tea at a noisy cafe near his offices in New York City’s Chinatown.

Keith Bearden: Tell me about your start in the music biz.

Richard Gotterher: I started when I was in high school in the early days of rock ‘n’ roll.  I was a classically trained piano player, and then I discovered the blues.  Listening to Alan Freed, I learned about rhythm and blues and black music.  So I started writing songs, at first copying Jerry Lee Lewis.  At the time it was Elvis and Jerry Lee, and being a piano player, I naturally gravitated to Jerry Lee.  So I wrote a song, when I was 16-years-old, called ‘I’m On Fire,’ which he eventually recorded in the ’60s just before his transition to country music.  One of his last real rock recordings.

I was playing with my own band, and I got some songs published.  One day I ran into two guys outside the office of one of the music publishing houses, Bob Feldman and Jerry Goldstein.  We hit it off and started writing songs together.  Then we started making demos, which were primitive one-track recordings.  And then we said to ourselves, “If we can write and produce demos, we can write and produce records.”

We had basically a string of hits from 1963 to 1966.  First, “My Boyfriend’s Back” by the Angels, which went number one.  We worked on the girl groups for years, and wrote for Freddy Cannon, Dion, Bobby Vee.  Lots of people.  I have a drawer full of almost one hundred 45s that we either wrote or produced, or both.

After ’66, we split up, and then I formed Sire Records with Seymour Stein.  We licensed a lot of European music, had some hits.  We had Climax Blues Band, Renaissance, “Hocus Pocus” by Focus.  I left Sire in the mid-’70s, when the punk thing started happening, when I discovered Blondie, Richard Hell, Robert Gordon, and made a lot of records with those people.

How did the Strangeloves happen?

We had been producing the Angels, and there was a point where they went on strike.  And we had this track for them, this remake of an old Patti Page or Jo Stafford song called “A Little Love (That’s All I Want From You).”  It was done in what was ska for the time; they called it bluebeat.  We changed it and called it “Love Love.”  The girl group thing was sort of fading, and the Beatles were coming in a big way, and the whole British Invasion, so we decided to sing on the track and call ourselves the Strangeloves.  In the middle, Bob recited the lyrics, pretending to be British.  We sold the record to Swan, put on these Beatle wigs and posed with these African drums in a photo, and put out this goofy press release that we were Australian.  With all the British groups around, we figured Australia would be novel.

We get a call from a DJ in Virginia Beach, VA, and he says, “This record is getting a great response down here, if you come down and perform, we can drive it up to number one.”  We said, “Okay.”  We get there, and we went to the airport, got in a small plane that drove down the runway, faking that we had just flew in from Australia.  There was a huge sign saying, “Virginia Beach welcomes Australia’s Strangeloves.”  There were all these screaming kids, holding teddy bears, and throwing jelly beans, cause that’s what they did back then.  When we went to perform, we only had this one song, and we knew we couldn’t just do that.  So we did “Bo Diddley” by Bo Diddley.  And the response was unbelievable!!

So we come back to New York and record it at Atlantic Studios.  Ahmet says he really likes it, but that we should take it to his new label Bang.  We took it to Bert Berns [co-writer of “Twist and Shout,” among many other hits], and he says, “This is great, but Bo Diddley was Bo Diddley, why don’t we re-work it using the same beat?” And the four of us wrote, “I Want Candy.”

There was this wonderful guitar player at the time named Everett Barksdale, who came up with the riff and he was playing off the melody to “Anna,” the hit by Silvano Merano.  We had become pretty knowledgeable about producing at this point.  We kept ping-ponging in the studio —we recorded the drums twice, along with me banging on African drums, and Jerry, Bob and myself were overdubbed singing together four times.  That’s why this record has this overwhelming sound to it.  After we mixed it and mastered it, we added more EQ and reverb, so it has a very processed feel, but at the same time has a real raw vibe to it.  This process occurred over a period of weeks.

We used a lot of tricks, but I was always careful to keep things spontaneous.  The wonderful thing about recording with them was there were moments that you captured, and you tried to go back and get it again and you couldn’t.  When we did “Hang On Sloopy” [Gotterher produced the McCoy’s massive hit], we tried it again —we did the same beat and sound again and it never came together.  It could’ve been something as obtuse as the temperature of the studio or the weight on the drums.  With the digital technology of today there is none of that variable.

Why did the Strangeloves only have one album?

Albums were not the thing back then.  Until the Beatles came along, nobody really bought albums, they bought singles.  Our one LP had three hits on it, but it didn’t make a difference.  Moving on to the ’70s, if you had a hit song you had to have an album because people bought albums.  The market had changed.  That’s one of the reasons radio was more open back in the ’60s to play new and indie records.  People didn’t play album tracks.  They wanted hit 45s.  They were hungry for ’em, and the damn things only lasted two minutes! That’s a lot of demand for product!

When you toured, did people catch on that you were three guys from Brooklyn and the Bronx?

No, never.  We had our fake Australian accents, and that was enough.

Do you have a philosophy as a producer?

I learned from listening to records by Leiber-Stoller and Phil Spector.  The song has to always be your center, your focal point.  If you create an environment that enhances the song, that’s the job of the producer.  You have to listen to the song first.  I came from being a songwriter.  What I like to think I bring to a recording is a clarity of thought.

A lot of bands make really stinky records when they stop working with you.  Holly & the Italians made an amazing debut with you, and their second LP is unlistenable.  Nobody likes the Go-Go’s’ third record.  Marshall Crenshaw’s career never recovered from Steve Lillywhite doing Field Day.  How much involvement do you have with young, untried bands?  What changes did you make when you worked with Blondie for example?

They didn’t need a lot of changes, really, just structural channeling.  What I like to try to do with a band is work with their deficits, as well as their assets.  To me, it didn’t matter if you didn’t play that well —I found a way of getting it out of you.  A lot of producers would say, “You have to do this perfectly —if you can’t do it, I’ll find someone else who can.”  I always figured, “Hey, Clem Burke isn’t the greatest drummer in the world, but something he’s doing is unique, and fits in with the uniqueness of the band.  And it’s my job to bring that to listeners.”  There were things about Blondie that were amazing from the beginning —their sense of humor, their attitude.  I wasn’t as concerned with their ability to execute everything.  What I wanted to do was capture the feeling and enthusiasm of what they were about, and just focus it in a way that was palatable to mass audiences.  Because they were considered weird back then.  There was nothing remotely like it on radio.  I wanted to bring out the qualities they had.  Professionalism is not as important to me as it was to radio programmers of the time, perhaps.

Those first two records were not very popular in the US, but they were incredibly popular overseas.  Then of course Mike Chapman worked with them and focused more on the discipline part of producing them, and they exploded with “Heart of Glass.”

Blondie sounded like Blondie when they were with you.  Chapman’s hand was a lot heavier than yours was.  That’s the difference between you and producers like Phil Spector and Giorgio Moroder —you don’t mold bands in your image.  The records you produce don’t all sound alike.  They have a pop aesthetic, but–

There is a thread that goes through it.  I’m more interested in the emotion of the song.  The sound should be appropriate for emotion of the song.

What were your challenges working with the Go-Go’s? They were part of the L.A. punk scene and sounded pretty ragged.  How much teaching did you have to do?

A lot.  The Go-Go’s at their first rehearsal just said, “Just tell us what you want us to do.  We want to be successful.”  The funny part about that record was when it came out, [IRS Records president] Miles Copeland called me up, and he was just livid!  “You ruined my group!  I gave you this great punk band and listen to this bubblegum shit!”  He was talking about “Our Lips Are Sealed,” which I thought was just amazing.  The band themselves weren’t there for the mix, and when they heard it, they didn’t talk to me for a good six months.  They cried.  They thought it didn’t sound like them.  It wasn’t grungy and disorganized.  To me, it captured their identity perfectly.  Then they came to love it and we did a second album.

Your sixties work was mostly session musicians.  Did you have any studio groups during the new wave era?

No.  We brought in a different drummer for Holly & the Italians, and we occasionally had someone do sax, or Paul Schaffer doing keyboards.

Joey Levine from the Ohio Express was asked to produce some new wave records, but found the whole scene “too freaky.”  Did you have any hesitations about it?

No.  I went down to CBGBs early on.  Marty Thau was really into the change that was going on, and he took me.  I signed Robert Gordon, Richard Hell, Blondie, all to production contracts and got them with record labels.  No one else would have them at the time.

One of the great things about new wave was that it was a real New York scene.

Yes!  New York was the only thing going.  New York started it and England and the rest of the U.S. followed.  Unless you count rap, it was the last big New York thing.  We started that, too.

Did you see a lot of parallels between your sixties music and the new wave bands you were producing?

Most definitely.  The people who were really doing it in the early days of punk, completely bypassed the early ’70s.  They were really into ’50s rockabilly, girl groups and of course the British invasion.  To them, rock ‘n’ roll stopped in 1969 and began again in 1976.

There is an argument that bands who aren’t really bands—that are studio musicians, or created by producers, managers or records companies—are inherently invalid because they are “manufactured.”  How do you feel about that?

Well, that’s certainly invalid if you’re talking about pop music.  That idea eliminates a huge portion of what’s happening, yesterday and today.  The purpose of making a record is so people will enjoy it, it gives them pleasure and a unique experience.  I mean that’s it.  It doesn’t matter for me.  I don’t listen to today’s studio groups like the Backstreet Boys and the like.  It just seems contrived.  It has a factory-produced feel.  I consider the stuff we did in the sixties to be much freeer and more organic.

Jeff Barry’s Bubblegum Blues

Jeff Barry’s Bubblegum Blues
interview by Don Charles

“Some songs, like ‘Where Have All The Flowers Gone?’ people hear and they get sad. I think I’d rather have them get happy! That’s really where I was coming from.” That’s how songwriter/producer extraordinaire Jeff Barry sums up his musical philosophy, a philosophy that moved millions of dollars’ worth of vinyl around the world during the 1960s. Jeff Barry was the crown king of bubble gum rock producers (only Jerry Kasenetz and Jeff Katz’ A & R staff came close to challenging his dominance of the genre).

Jeff Barry: I was born in Brooklyn. When I was about seven, my parents got divorced, and I moved in with my mom and sister in Plainfield, New Jersey. I lived there until I was eleven, and then we moved back to Brooklyn. For some reason, I was hearing a lot of country music. As long as I can remember, I’ve always loved horses, and probably without realizing it, I liked listening to country and western music because that went along with horses!

Don Charles: My research indicates that your family name was Adelberg . . .

Jeff Barry: Yes, that

The Melodic Milestones of Jeff Barry

The Melodic Milestones of Jeff Barry
by Chris Davidson

The bubblegum firmament boasts many a bigwig but none bigger and firmer than Jeff Barry, a man blessed with ears you should smooch the next time you see him. For without those nutty lobes, which uncannily heard glistening super-pop pumping up from the subway grilles on his stroll to the office down Broadway every morning, we

Kasenetz-Katz and Their Super-Duper Rock & Roll Kavalcade

Kasenetz-Katz and Their Super-Duper Rock & Roll Kavalcade
by James Porter

Of all the revered record producers with a hitmaking streak and an identifiable sound, the Kasenetz-Katz duo has to be among the most underrated. Garage freaks worship at the altar of Ed Cobb (Standells, Chocolate Watchband), Ken Nelson (Buck Owens, Wanda Jackson) is a big name with the retro-country set, the outer-space sonatas of Joe Meek (Blue Men, Tornadoes) have a strong cult, and Phil Spector is probably the only non-performing producer who has his own section in record stores. But even though Jerry Kasenetz and Jeff Katz produced their share of radio-active hits in ’68-’69, most rock historians regard them as a footnote. In The New Book Of Rock Lists by Dave Marsh and James Bernard, producers as diverse as Lee

Blow Us A Bubble

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Producers and Impresarios

Bubblegum is the story of songwriter-producers—makers of shiny sounds.  The villains in many rock legends, these are people who saved their innocence for their musical sentiments and never did anything so stupid as to sign away their publishing.  Firing inept drummers, replacing lead singers, they ruthlessly worked the system to make it pop.  But here we also find gentle studio geeks with a genius for engineering, child prodigies, cheerful tunesmiths in love with the game, the insane pace, the charts.

We’re conscious of legendary recording sessions with Phil Spector and Brian Wilson, George Martin facilitating Sgt. Pepper, Aretha’s first epochal piano chord in Memphis or Hendrix pulling together layers of sonic strata on Electric Ladyland.  Still, our sense of the studio’s place in Rock Mythology remains peripheral.  Only serious music fans know the names James Jamerson or Hal Blaine, while even the most casual listener knows their work.  Bubblegum, like Disco, like Motown, like much of Nashville today, exists primarily within a studio culture of session players and songwriter-producers.  This particular hyphenate ought to be better known than singer-songwriters—it’s the economic trigger for the whole recording industry.  Why?  Because both songwriters and producers collect royalties, and if you double up your credits on a hit record you’re raking in some serious chump change.  

Reading these interviews we’re struck by the canniness and audacity of non-writers Kasenetz and Katz piggybacking bizarre studio goofs onto the b-sides of sure hits to collect songwriting checks.  Or Jonathan King’s shameless talent for converting fads into pop hits.  But we also delight in Jeff Barry building up the drum track for “Be My Baby” one mallet tap at a time, or Mike Batt living in a Womble suit for a week before setting those characters in song.

Here you find tricksters and hipsters, songwriters and songbirds, studio tans and golden ears.
 
West Coast Pop anticipated bubblegum’s methods, blurred the lines between music for sale and music that sells, influenced the sound of bubblegum and provided the pool of creators that presided over its cartooniest era.

As the man who squeezed Brian Wilson’s vision into an LP’s worth of slot-car racing songs and gave voice to Big Daddy Roth’s model kits, Gary Usher’s influence can’t be overstated.  Bubblegum’s splendid tradition of completely fictitious bands starts at the Brill Building, but achieves a cheesy genius in the Weird-Ohs, the Super Stocks, the Hondells, and the Revells.  Though his busiest period predates bubblegum’s onset by several years, Gary Usher laid out the entire bubblegum blueprint before it had a name.  He recorded musically and lyrically upbeat music with a steady core of studio musicians under a variety of ghost band names, commissioned for a visual medium (substitute Beach Movies for TV here).  Whereas most bubblegum makers went into commercial jingles after their bubblegum careers, Usher brazenly turned a Honda promotion into a masterstroke of pop genius (“Little Honda”).

Gary Zekley perfectly encapsulates the West Coast studio scene, swallowing not-so-disparate sub-genres like surf, sunshine pop, bubblegum and psych pop in one gulp.  Most of his East Coast peers simply considered themselves pop songwriters with little concern for marketing categories.  Zekley’s fluid career cautions against leaning too heavily on genre distinctions.  You can assign the Fun and Games, Yellow Balloon and the Clique to different bins, but the same talent clearly penned “The Grooviest Girl in the World,” “How Can I Be Down” and “Superman.”

Oftentimes the supporting players provide a better window into a scene than the big names.  Carol Connors found a niche in the L.A. scene, fronting Beach Bunny bands for Gary Usher and co-writing some tunes.  Carol’s “Yum Yum Yamaha” does more to clarify the seamless fusion of surf, bubblegum and commercial jingles that defined west coast pop than any five books about the Beach Boys.

The Yummies

The Yummies, interview with Les Fradkin
by David Smay

The Yummies (AKA Les Fradkin) had a regional hit in October 1970 called "Hippie Lady," a single on Sunflower Records. Hundreds of bubblegum one-shots ricocheted off the charts without doing any lasting damage. Here we get the inside scoop on how one such act, the Yummies, came to be.

David Smay: How did you first get signed to MGM? Did you submit a demo tape? Were you a studio singer/musician that they thought they could spin into a solo act?

Les Fradkin: I was brought over to MGM by Randy Edelman, another songwriter who I befriended at April-Blackwood Music (CBS), where I was already signed as a staff writer. He bolted over to MGM where the "grass looked greener" and suggested that if I was looking for a solo deal (which I was), to give them a try (which I did). My "demo" consisted of a live audition with my acoustic 12-string guitar for Eddie Deane and Wally Schuster (Leo Feist Music) who signed me to a long-term production and songwriter agreement. They thought they could spin me into a solo act due to my involvement with Edison Lighthouse, where I had never had the opportunity to contribute as a writer. Plus I had the endorsement of John Hammond Sr. from my tenure at CBS and I guess that meant something in those days.

DS: Who produced the sessions for the Yummies? Who wrote the songs?  Who played on the sessions?

LF: The sessions were produced by myself, Eddie Deane and Steve Katz (our engineer). The sessions took place at Sound Exchange Studios in NYC in the early fall 1970. This situation evolved because I was already signed to Sunflower/MGM Records as a solo artist ("Fearless Fradkin") and I was keen to prove myself as a producer to the powers that were. So, brazenly, I asked for the shot. They said, "do something on your own and, if we like it, we’ll buy the master!" I already had a single out as Fearless Fradkin (SUN #101: "Song Of A Thousand Voices" b/w "You Can Cry If You Want To"). This record was given a Billboard Top 60 pick and superficially sounded like the Brotherhood of Man type style. The song was successful on the MOR charts (#12) but never made it higher than #87 US. BUT… Mirielle Mathieu recorded it for Philips and had a massive hit with it in 1971 where it hit #1 and sold really well.  I talked endlessly about this possible independent production project to Steve Katz.  He was very supportive of the idea to do a bubblegum record, since it was still quite popular on the charts at that time. So we went to the record shop and bought every bubblegum record we could lay our hands on and proceeded to "dissect" the "formula." His boss Bob Morgan (who produced Bobby Vinton and owned the studio) was given a piece of the deal to get the time booked. I basically wrote both songs with a little help from Eddie Deane on lyrics. Steve and Bob were given co-credit although they really had nothing to do with the writing. More political perks, I guess.  Since we didn’t want to spend much money out of pocket, I played all the instruments on both sides of the record. We "borrowed" a Farfisa organ (an important sound to use) and I played acoustic and electric guitars, bass AND drums to a click so I could keep accurate time. Eddie and Bob helped with endless handclap overdubs.  I sang all the lead vocals. Eddie and I did the backgrounds.  The single that we originally planned was "Patty Cake." We even cut an acetate with the B-side consisting of the A-Side played backwards! They said, "we want a real B-side!" Back we went. Out came "Hippie Lady"–a kind of "Bo Diddley" bubblegum piece. To our surprise, they like that side even more than "Patty Cake." So "Hippie Lady" became the A-side of Sunflower #103. It was released October 1970.

DS: Did the Yummies ever make any live performances, or were they only a studio creation?

LF: The Yummies were intended, at first, as just another studio group. But the record hit in a couple of regions, which necessitated our "employing" some of my friends to assist in a couple of TV spots to lip-sync it.

After The Yummies, Les continued to record for MGM, though his solo album was never released. As a producer he worked on an unreleased Left Banke album for Bell in 1972, and birthed (Lester Bangs’ favorites) the Godz’ two albums for ESP.  In the late ‘70s, Les joined the original cast of Beatlemania, left to write jingles and compose for soap operas, only to return to Beatlemania for the entire nineties.  Today, Les is again working as a producer.

The Turtles

The Turtles
by Gary Pig Gold

Take a look at the cover of the Turtles’ stunning 1968 album Battle Of The Bands: therein stand not one, not two, but twelve different mock-"Turtles" (one for each song), each posed in an absolutely flawless visual parody of—or was it a tribute to?—one dozen different musical sub-genres and styles.

While this delightful ruse may have provided a hearty premise for—gulp—another Concept Album (albeit one which, in my less-than-humble opinion, far out-surpassed the Beatles’ comparatively meek Pepper-grinding), beneath all the dress-up fun and games lay a more than telling element of ironic, bitter truth.  For the real Turtles indeed spent their entire career struggling to establish a single, all-encompassing identity in the eyes of not only their audiences the world over, but with their long-suffering bosses at White Whale Records, radio programmers everywhere, and perhaps even the actual band members themselves.

In fact, the band’s very origins seem mucho-schizo to say the least: springing to life in Los Angeles circa 1961 as a rough ‘n’ ready instrumental combo (the Nightriders), they soon transformed themselves into a real-life surf band (the Crossfires), later tried their hand at folk music (as the Crosswind Singers, would you believe), were also known to show up at local bowling alleys pretending to be Gerry & the Pacemakers, then finally settled on the hallowed Turtles moniker (though almost the Tyrtles) upon signing with White Whale in 1965.  Their first hit, a Top 40-friendly cover of Dylan’s "It Ain’t Me Babe," was quickly followed by a P.F. Sloan sound-alike ("Let Me Be") and then the incredible, edible "You Baby."

The latter, also from the pedantic pen of Sloan, was an absolute, stick-to-the-roof-of-your-ears candy-rock delight, and its cheery combination of one-handed keyboard licks atop "Hang On Sloopy" thump-and-strum was soon heard reverberating throughout all the biggest and best hits of the Ohio Express, Fruitgum Co., et al et al.  But by this time (1967-68), the Turtles had already turned to New York writers Gary Bonner and Alan Gordon for their next two mega-smashes, "Happy Together" and "She’d Rather Be With Me."

It was right about now that the Turtles—always a super-slick and hard-hitting live act—began defiantly expressing more of their road-tested (and quite often far-out-there) chops on vinyl as well.  Despite the fact that their producer Joe Wissert was reportedly spending an inordinate amount of time reciting poetry and eating gingerbread bats when he should’ve been knob-twiddling, "She’s My Girl," "Sound Asleep" and even the infamous "Umbassa And The Dragon" were worthy enough to earn the respect of such highly-coveted peers as Frank Zappa (who later employed several post-Turtles in his most popular incarnation of the Mothers of Invention) and Ray Davies (who accepted a rare non-Kink production assignment when offered the chance to record the Turtles’ final album).

Yet White Whale, a small label solely dependent upon the Turtles for their financial bread and butter, just wanted lots more "She’d Rather Be Happy"-sounding smashes.  Oh yeah?  Well!  So group leaders Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, butts against the wall (but with tongues very firmly in cheek) simply responded one night by writing the million-selling, wholly-bubble-worthy "Elenore": a hit so insidiously innocuous that it landed the band a chance soon afterwards to perform at the Nixon White House!

This being the late sixties however, gigs at Tricia Nixon’s prom were not the kind of events any well-respecting band wore on their denim-tattered sleeves.  So as the Turtles’ hair and beards—to say nothing of their songs themselves—grew ever longer and less manageable, and while hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties due from White Whale still seemed lost in the ether, our boys finally tired of bucking the system and bitterly disbanded in 1970.  It was a dark day indeed for not only bubblegum, but for mankind in general.

Able to toss off cheerful Top 10 hits at the drop of a Nehru hat, then reply with such intricate, multi-layered gems as "Grim Reaper Of Love," the Turtles certainly could, without a doubt, be considered true purveyors of bubblegum at its ultimate, cleverly-crafted  stickiness.  These many different faces—and facets—of the Turtles also provide a textbook overview of how, and most importantly why, "image" has forever remained at the very core of any band’s acceptance and ultimate success.  Many of bubblegum’s greatest, from the Monkees and Partridges to even the Spice Girls and beyond, have obviously learned important lessons from the Turtles’ hard-wrought lessons.

The Sopwith Camel

Medium Image

The Sopwith Camel
by Kim Cooper

Although they recorded for Kama Sutra, and their sole hit had the traditional double-barreled name, the Sopwith Camel was emphatically not a bubblegum band.  What they were were mid-sixties San Francisco misfits, a little too weird for that scene, who scored a big hit single with a New York producer and broke up so quickly that they barely finished their album.  

Nevertheless, people continue to lazily lump the Sopwith Camel in with the bubblegummers, and not entirely without reason.  Most Kama Sutra acts had hardcore kiddie appeal, and the Camel was no exception.  Their charming, retro songs would go over nicely during kindergarten quiet time.  And like all the best bubblegum bands, they were brought to New York at a producer’s behest, only to have everything go wrong.  If not truly of the genre, we’re willing to peg them as bubblegumesque.

Band leaders Peter Kraemer and Terry MacNeil met in a bookshop in 1966.  Terry was a student at the San Francisco Art Institute, and Peter was from a bohemian Virginia City family—although he’d moved away before the Red Dog Saloon became hepcat-central during the Charlatans’ tenure.  Drummer Norman Mayell had played with Mike Bloomfield and Charlie Musselwhite in Chicago before moving west to hanging out with the Kesey crowd.  Martin Beard was British, seventeen, and the bassist, natch.

Kraemer had been living with Chet Helms in the Haight when the latter was trying to launch a new group.  Names were bandied about, and Kraemer’s suggestion was mocked for being “trite and dumb”—so Helms’ group became Big Brother and the Holding Company (sheesh) and Kraemer remembered Sopwith Camel when he formed his own band.

Things started happening for the Camel once occasional bassist Bobby Collins sent a demo tape including “Hello, Hello” to Lovin’ Spoonful producer Erik Jacobsen.  Jacobsen—a visionary who had left his bluegrass band after hearing the Beatles, and who collaborated with John Sebastian to forge a distinctly American brand of folk’n’ roll —smelled a hit with this light-hearted, retro ditty, and invited the group out to New York.  They signed with Kama Sutra, making them one of the earliest SF bands with a record deal.  They’d never quite fit in with the other San Francisco bands, and “selling out” to an East Coast producer ensured that this remained the case.  Nonetheless, the Victor Moscoso cover art on their album was one of the first instances of mass exposure for an underground cartoonist from the SF scene.

Sure enough, “Hello, Hello” made the Top 10.  Their album, recorded as the group was disintegrating in unfriendly Manhattan, is a delightful old-timey idyll mixing moments of whimsy with some nifty oddball rock’n’roll.  Kraemer’s flapper vocal stylings and romantic lyrics are well-served by the organ grinding band.  You can see why Jacobsen liked them—they’re much closer to the Spoonful in their sense of play and wit than to any of the super-serious Bay Area bands.  After recording a couple of Levis ads, the band split up.  They reformed around 1971, prompted by Burger King’s use of “Hello, Hello” as a commercial jingle, and went on to record one well-reviewed space-rock LP with Jacobsen, The Miraculous Hump Returns from the Moon (Reprise, 1973).