The Turtles -- "Happy Together" (1967)

Can this be one of the most perfect pop songs ever written, performed and arranged? I'm thinking it's got to be in my top 10.

The Turtles, formerly the surf band the Crossfires, had a string of "sunshine pop" hits in the mid-60's that make it well worth your while to buy their greatest hits album. Many of their songs were highly slick, west coast groovy, semi-bubblegum tunes -- almost all of them not written by the band, but an artillery of LA's top songwriters. In many ways, they were a musical precursor to the wonderful Grass Roots.


The Turtles, besides the rather un-threatening goofy name, were the home of the infamous Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, better known later as dubbed by Frank Zappa as "the Phlorescent Leach and Eddie" when they joined his Mothers of Invention, and later just shortened to "Flo and Eddie." As you'll see in the videos below, Kaylan was the good looking lead singer, practically standing in for rock and roll's first bar mitzvah boy. His good friend Volman was his comic foil, a heavyset goofball with a kinky hair and nerdy glasses, always looking to make trouble or crack him up mid-song.

The verses of "Happy Together" were based on one of music's perennial chord patterns, the descending from the E minor, to the D, to the C, to the B major (ironically, the same blueprint for The Grass Roots' "I'd Wait A Million Years" verses -- if it ain't broke, don't fix it!). The lyrics are very much like a nursery rhyme, and that is why I feel it is so instantly familiar to any living breathing human being with its cadences and rhymes:


Imagine me and you, I do
I think about you day and night
It's only right
To think about the girl you love
And hold her tight
So happy together.

If I should call you up
Invest a dime
And you say you belong to me
And ease my mind
Imagine how the world could be
So very fine
So happy together.

And then later...

Me and you
And you and me
No matter how they tossed the dice
It had to be
The only one for me is you
And you for me
So happy together.


What brings it to a whole other level is the chorus, where it shifts into E major, straight electric guitar chords on the eighth beats, lots of horn and layered vocals ("pa-paa!"), like a blissful explosion of love, flower power and euphoria.

I can't see me loving nobody but you
For all my life
When you're with me
Baby the skies will be blue
For all my life.


This is akin to when Frankie Valli revs to the next gear on the second part of "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You" when he belts out: "I-I love you baby, and if it's quite all right, I need you baby, until the morning light...." You are forced, literally forced to sing along, perhaps loudly, maybe even in a public setting and hypnotically forgetting any embarrassment.

For crying out loud, this is the song that knocked one of my very favorite Beatles songs, "Penny Lane," out of the #1 spot! I remember being at some Queens, NY day camp in the summer of '67, picking up dodgeball throwing tips from some kid named Barry (a two-handed grip on two sides of the ball, making an aggressive circular wind-up and then letting it loose at some poor kid's stomach), and "Happy Together" was rotating constantly on the AM radio. You just could not get it out of your head and everybody sang along to those nursery rhyme lyrics.

Let's just stop and honor these anonymous songwriters of "Happy Together," who never quite became as famous as Lennon and McCartney, or Bacharach and David, but who had the amazing skill to write these classic unforgettable pop songs. "Happy Together" was written by Gary Bonner and Alan Gordon, who also collaborated on Three Dog Night's "Celebrate."

Below, a fun home-movie-type promo video shot in '67 for "Happy Together," followed by their semi-live performance on "The Ed Sullivan Show."

The Grass Roots -- "Midnight Confessions"

Rock and roll is filled with "manufactured" groups -- acts that were put together solely for the purpose of looking good and singing hits written by professional songwriters and producers. The most famous case, of course, is The Monkees.

The Grass Roots (and note that "grass" and "roots" are two separate words for these guys) started off as one thing and then, like a writer taking out his pencil eraser, wiped it out and created something completely different.

I was listening to The Grass Roots' Greatest Hits today in my car and was struck how their first great hit, "Let's Live For Today," sounds almost nothing like what followed afterwards. Heck, that song was even in the famous Nuggets garage rock compilation.

The Grass Roots were ABC subsidiary Dunhill's baby, under the wing of the Steve Barri/P.F. Sloan team. It was when they released "Midnight Confessions," a completely re-arranged version of a song written by Lou Josie for a group he managed called The Evergreen Blues, that the group exploded into a string of best-selling singles.

"Midnight Confessions" was truly the template for the big songs that came afterwards: slick pop/soul tracks, infused with traces of bubblegum, performed and arranged by the top L.A. studio cats. In a way, The Grass Roots were like an even smoother version of Three Dog Night, white boys with great voices, covering other people's songs with a little soul inside. The personnel of The Grass Roots may have changed every couple of years, but the one constant was lead singer Rob Grill.

That pop/soul LA sound really blossomed in the early 70's, notably with Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds ("Don't Pull Your Love," "Fallin' In Love") and the Four Tops' post-Motown run at Dunhill ("Keeper of the Castle," "Ain't No Woman (Like The One I Got").

For a simple pop single, the arrangement for "Midnight Confessions" is quite intricate, changing keys and chords patterns throughout the song. With that unmistakable opening bass line and cracking Jimmy Haskell horn arrangement (same guy who did Steely Dan's "My Old School" and you can definitely tell), "Midnight Confessions" just sort of grabbed you with its infectious tambourine beat and prominent organ arpeggios and chords. Grill has an air of desperation with his pop single predicament -- the girl he loves is engaged? Married?

The sound of your footsteps
Telling me that you're near
Your soft gentle motion, baby
Brings out the need in me that no-one can hear, except

In my midnight confessions
When I tell all the world that I love you
In my midnight confessions
When I say all the things that I want to
I love you!

But a little gold ring you wear on your hand makes me understand
There's another before me, you'll never be mine
I'm wasting my time.

Staggering through the daytime
Your image on my mind
Passing so close beside you baby
Sometimes the feelings are so hard to hide, except...

In my midnight confessions
When I tell all the world that I love you
In my midnight confessions
When I say all the things that I want to
I love you!


In around 2000, I was out in LA handling the publicity for Maxim magazine's first party there ("Circus Maximus") and the contracted producer had a gorgeous staff member helping us get ready for the big event. She was in her early 20's and was tantalizing us all with promises that she was going to visit New York City. She said her last name was Grill and her father "toured and sang." Well, leave it to the music trivia nut to take a few seconds and pull it out of the hat to ask her, "Rob Grill? The Grass Roots?" And yes, this was his daughter.

Below is a classic late 60's video of the band lip-synching their way through the marvelous "Midnight Confessions." I'm loving Rob Grill's pink frilly shirt under his brown tassled jacket... very hip.

Two more great song openings from the 60's and 70's

I recently heard two more song introductions that absolutely qualify for my list of Best Song Openings of the 60's and 70's. And just to remind you of the criteria, I'm not looking at openings that mimic the song's riff or chord pattern... I'm looking at intro's that stand unto themselves, intro's that have almost nothing to do with the rest of the song, they were written to be, well, original cool curtain raisers by themselves.

So the list now rises to nineteen songs.


Steely Dan -- "Josie": Here's a perfect example of what I mean, if you haven't clicked back to the original posting. It hit me when I recently took the family to see Steely Dan perform at the Beacon Theater. "Josie" opens with a weird Asian-sounding set of cutting electric guitar minor-key root chords with wind chimes swirling around in the background, a high hat lightly keeping a quarter note beat to build the tension. It segues into four typical Steely Dan minor seventh chords, cymbals crashing on each chord, hanging on the last one while an electric piano twirls some notes... then wham, into the funky beat and guitar riff of the song. The intro and the rest of the song are not related, but somehow they just click. Everything about the Steely Dan world is off-kilter, so piecing these two parts together seamlessly is par for the Fagen/Becker course.


The Mama's and The Papa's -- "California Dreaming": I had this entire song in reserve for a deserved post by itself, but as far as great intro's, this one was not only outstanding, but done on an acoustic guitar, well ahead of the similar sounding Simon & Garfunkel's "The Boxer." Pretty much panned to the left speaker, a solo acoustic guitarist picks out a canticle-like E suspended pattern, joined by another guitar in a higher counter melody until a hard E major chord strum. Pause. And then out of the right speaker, "All the leaves are brown...."

The 17 best song openings of the 60's and 70's

I first suggested this concept a few years ago to Blender magazine's editor in chief when we worked together. And like most story ideas I gave them, they ignored it. But I didn't forget it and that's why we have blogs like this, so we can do it. Except I'm just focusing on two decades the 60's and 70's.

Here's how I define the criteria for this list: it's an introduction that signals something is about to come, a true curtain raiser. It's not a riff -- if I wanted to do a list of great riffs, that would be something else. I wanted to single out openings that were not the song's main riffs.


1) The Beach Boys -- "California Girls." This was the first song I thought about when I devised this concept. I used it during the opening credits for a California family trip video I made because the opening has distinct sections that could be timed. "California Girls" unfolds like a slowly growing flower, dual guitars in unison playing the melody as the saxophone section blares louder and louder, the tingles of the cymbal rides, surrounded in Brian Wilson's amazing wall of sound reverb.

2) Michael Jackson -- "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough." This is like a bottle under pressure ready to pop. To the steady rhythm of an egg shaker, it seems like an electric bass and synth bass blended together in a rather short, sharp pattern. Jackson does a famous under his breath cosmic mumble: "You know I was, I was wondering if we should keep on. Because the force it's got a lot of power. And it makes me feel like... It make me feel like ...WOOOOOOOO!" From my favorite Jackson album, Off The Wall.

3) Average White Band -- "Pick Up The Pieces." A true call to get up onto the dance floor, eight seconds of Hamish Stuart's suspended rhythm guitar chord, the bass starting on one note and up an octave, a mashy organ chord fading up, and a tambourine sizzling through it all. An intro to one of the greatest hit instrumentals of all time.



4) The Beatles -- "A Hard Day's Night." One three-second ringing electric guitar chord from George Harrison's Rickenbacker. That'll get your attention. I always thought it was the one-hit strum of a typically-tuned open guitar (EADGBE). Except a couple of years ago, Guitar Player magazine devoted a whole page to what that opening chord really is. It's an F chord with an added G note on top. And Paul's bass is in there somewhere with a D note. Supposedly, George Martin's got a piano note in there as well.


5) Bruce Springsteen -- "Tenth Avenue Freezeout." The Boss has had many terrific song intros -- "Thunder Road" would be right on top of that list -- but if there's one song that had an intro that stood apart from the rest of the song, it's this one from Born To Run. Legend has it that nobody was happy with the song's horn arrangement until guitarist "Miami" Steve Van Zandt, a true connoisseur of everything great that's rock and soul, basically hummed the arrangement he heard in his head to the horn playing Brecker Brothers. The intro was a three chord R&B fanfare done in time to the ride cymbal, then Max Weinberg's snare powering up like a motorboat, kicking it into glorious life.

6) Edwin Starr -- "War." A five second drum roll that gets louder and louder, clearly meant to represent the military, perhaps "Taps." Then Starr and the singers launch cold into their "War" chorus. Startling and dramatic for one of 1970's most socially-conscious Motown hits.

7) The Fifth Dimension -- "Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In." The epitome of 60's orchestrated pop, this massive hit was the collaboration of producer Bones Howe and the top LA studio musicians and arrangers of the time (I'm thinking of the infamous "Wrecking Crew" with drummer Hal Blaine). Taking hippie culture and making it mass market acceptable for the radio, the song opens with a spacey three note pattern played on flutes and piccolos with a triangle ringing, high strings fading in and then the tuned timpani's booming out that beat, a hi hat on every other beat. The whole opening evoked some kind of out of body travel experience ("When the moon is in the seventh house...").


8) The Rolling Stones -- "Honky Tonk Women." You knew exactly what was coming from the mere distinguishable unaccompanied taps on the cowbell, followed by the thunderous entry of Charlie Watts' drums. I must have worn this 45 down to a pulp and played it for my grandmother, who said she "liked the beat" (a line she must have copped from "American Bandstand").



9) Earth, Wind & Fire -- "In The Stone." This group was at its commercial peak when they released the I Am album, which opened with this song. Of all the songs on this list, this is probably the most full-blown, something you'd picture smoke bombs and fireworks going off, the famous EWF horns, strings, hand percussion -- this sounds like a damn overture for one of the finest dance tunes the band ever did. I'm already envisioning using it for my family's bar mitzvah entrance next March.


10) Billy Joel -- "Piano Man"/"The Stranger." Although this first song is considered a classic, but far from one of my favorites of his, Joel was always a witty jokester. So to begin his autobiographical tale of a lounge piano player, he plays two schmaltzy chords and accompanying overdone dramatic notes, the kinds you would hear in just about any nightclub. Joel went for an even more cinematic effect with the second tune, low Em piano chords and slow sizzling cymbal beats accompanying a heavily-reverbed whistle, evoking the lonely man image of the song.

11) The Hollies -- "Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress." I saw a guy playing this electric guitar intro note per note at the Guitar Center in Carle Place about two years ago and thought I should go home and teach myself that one. This is a virtuoso solo electric guitar piece that has nothing to do with the song that follows it except it just sounds so cool and heck if I know why it's even there. It's an arpeggioed Em-G pattern with two thunderous tom slams at the end of each go 'round, and then into the E major boogie of the song with the nearly un-decipherable lyrics.

12) Arthur Conley -- "Sweet Soul Music." Who would have thought that the main motif from "The Magnificent Seven" on horns could translate into one of the great soul music intro's of the 60's? And what a great song, name checking southern soul greats like Wilson Pickett, Lou Rawls, and James Brown.



13) Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons -- "Let's Hang On." The sung intro to this hit reminds me of a lot of old 40's songs, such as the so-called "American songbook" of Cole Porter and Irving Berlin, which had sung mini-intros that had no resemblance to the rest of the song. It's like that kind of throwback to those days and damn if it works: "There ain't no good in our goodby-in'... True love takes a lot of tryin'... oh I'm cryin'."



14) The Doors -- "Light My Fire." I don't know who thought of the idea of piecing together the chord progressions of John Coltrane's version of "My Favorite Things" and turning it into a Bach-sounding canticle roaring into one of rock's psychedelic classics, but it worked all too well.





15) Jimi Hendrix -- "Foxey Lady." I'm not the world's biggest Hendrix fan, but how can I not appreciate a searing growing feedback buzz coming in from the distance as this song's intro. He was the first to do this on a hit single, and it represented him perfectly.




16) Aerosmith -- "Sweet Emotion." It took a lot of imagination to do a pretty lengthy spaced-out intro like this before Joey Kramer's snare intro bumps into this hard rock classic. Shakers, a guitar talk box, funky bass -- it's all groove with no drums, but it gives you plenty of time to anticipate the roaring guitars about to come.



17) The Sweet -- "Ballroom Blitz"/"Fox On The Run." I can't believe I almost left these two out. "Ballroom Blitz" has a truly insane kick-off, with a hard-pounding snare march and kick back beat, and Brian Connolly calling out each member of the band: "Are you ready, Steve?" "Ah hah." "Andy?" "Yeah!" "Mick?" "OK." "All right, fellas. Let's go-o-o-o-o!" I mean, what the hell was that? And "Fox On The Run" with its analog synth going out of control, its cutoff opening wider and wider until it blows its top. You have to credit the brilliant producer Mike Chapman for those memorable beginnings and songs themselves.


RUNNER UPS:

Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airman -- "Hot Rod Lincoln." How can you not love a song that starts with the singer alone babbling out one cool line from the end of it?

Boz Scaggs -- "Lido Shuffle." Jeff Porcaro's confident fast shuffle to David Hungate's one note bass playing 16ths. Sometimes the simplest things just work.

The 80's

When I get to best song openings of the 80's down the line, I'm 100% sure that Prince's "Dearly beloved" monologue for "Let's Go Crazy" is going to top the list.

The Hollies -- "Carrie Anne" (1967)

The Hollies stood out from so many of the British Invasion bands because they had consistency, musicianship, longevity, talent and an abundance of songwriting skills.

In some ways, they were the forerunners of the jangly Byrds sound, even contributing member Graham Nash to them. No matter how the music scene evolved around them through the years, they stuck to their chiming guitars, multiple harmonies and classy choice of material.

It's tough for me to pick out one song to start with the Hollies, so I'm diving in with "Carrie Anne." This one stands out for me because it's their biggest hit to prominently features Nash's unmistakable vocals, and it has an out-of-right-field steel drum solo, which must have seemed alien at a time of guitar dominance. It took a lot of guts to put that type of solo in there -- there's nothing in the song that resembles anything Caribbean -- yet somebody had the genius to try it, and it works.

The year it came out, the band was already in the third year of an incredibly long roll of chart topping hits, which started with their cover of "Just One Look" in 1964, so they were really picking up steam heading into their next single, "King Midas In Reverse."

"Carrie Anne" was also co-written by band members Nash, Tony Hicks and Allan Clarke. Clarke was the lead vocalist for the band for all those successful years and known for his emotional delivery. Although on "Carrie Anne," the lead vocals were traded, Clarke pretty much stood front and center for the band's long productive history.

This past late fall, "Carrie Anne" had the honor of being the first Hollies song my young daughter clicked with, immediately identifying with the lyrics of playing school games as kids.

When we were at school our games were simple
I played a janitor, you played a monitor
Then you played with older boys and prefects
What's the attraction in what they're doing.

Hey Carrie Anne, what's your game now, can anybody play?
Hey Carrie Anne, what's your game now, can anybody play?


The "Carrie Anne" videos below are a real treat. The first is a live 1969 performance on BBC's Channel 4 in black and white, with no steel drums, substituted by the bassist plays along with some off-screen orchestra. Graham Nash has left the year before. The second video was a 1968 lip synch performance on "The Smother Brothers Show" in color, Nash in full "Robin Hood"-type gear. And finally, a 1973 live performance on "ABC in Concert" at a time when Clarke had left the group for a solo career and was replaced by Swedish singer Mikael Rickfors.

Nilsson -- "Everybody's Talkin'" (1969)

Truly out of another time and era, "Everybody's Talkin'" is closely aligned with the film it came from, Midnight Cowboy, that the song evokes such clear emotions from this classic late 60's John Schlesinger film about loners scraping by to make it in New York City.




Certainly the first five minutes when short order cook Joe Buck (Jon Voight in his film debut) leaves his town in the middle of nowhere, Texas to take a bus to Manhattan and make a living as a hustler. He walks the streets of the city looking out of place yet not out of place at all in a fine cowboy hat and boots, a grinning picture of blond charisma through the bustling avenues. He's checking out the sights, especially those fine rich women on the East Side, ready to use his best pick up line to get a transaction going. He walks by what seems like passed out body in the front of Tiffany's and wonders why nobody is stopping to see what's wrong with this poor fellow.

Many people think its was Nilsson who wrote "Everybody's Talkin'," but it was composed by folk singer Fred Neil and recorded by Nilsson for his 1968 Aeriel Ballet album. The original single flopped but was later picked up for the Midnight Cowboy soundtrack, where it was rediscovered and became a top 10 hit. Although this was the world's first vocal introduction on a mass basis for Nilsson, he was always a terrific songwriter and at the time, Three Dog Night was about to release its first smash, a cover of Nilsson's "One."

The beauty of "Everybody's Talkin'" is its carefree, hit the highway no matter where it goes feel. The signature major-major seventh introduction on the banjo has this down-home flavor, the bass easily going up and down on that root chord, the train motif brushes on the snare, and a rather striking George Tipton orchestration with high strings staying on one long note for most of the choruses.

The Midnight Cowboy producers couldn't have picked a better opening song, one that conveys wanting better things somewhere else, not listening to anybody else but yourself on the journey to that place...

Everybody's talkin' at me
I don't hear a word they're saying
Only the echoes of my mind.

People stopping staring
I can't see their faces
Only the shadows of their eyes.

I'm going where the sun keeps shining
Thru' the pouring rain,
Going where the weather suits my clothes
Banking off of the North East wind
Sailing on summer breeze
And skipping over the ocean like a stone.


I remember hearing the song for the first time, captivated by the above elements, but truly moved by Nilsson's voice. He was gifted with some true emotion in his delivery, and while he put it all into the song, there was something eccentric about the wordless middle part of the song. He "woah- woah- woah" the verse melody in what would become his trademark"melodic whine," for lack of a better description. He held one note towards the end of the part, and after a decade of on the mark crooners, you couldn't help but shiver at the unusual timbre of Nilsson's tone. This is also the only part of the song that the strings go into lower octaves.

When you hear the music in the film's early sections, the mix is different from the single. Nilsson's vocals are a different take, most noticeably at the song's end. The first video is taken right from Midnight Cowboy's opening credits, and then below, a great black and white video of Nilsson lipsynching to the song on the West German TV show "Beat Club."

Spirit -- "I Got A Line On You" (1968)

Part of the great San Francisco rock boom of the 60's which gave us Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead, Spirit never achieved the long-lasting success of either of those bands, and still remain under appreciated to this day.

They started as a psychedelic rock band, but gradually incorporated jazz and world music with each new album. Unquestionably, they were an acquired taste with their experimental excursions. Remarkably, they were produced by the legendary Lou Adler, who seems to have had his hand in so many influential artists from The Mama and Papas and Johnny Rivers to Carole King and, well, Cheech and Chong.

Their biggest hit by far was "Got A Line On You" from their aptly named second album The Family That Plays Together (guitarist Randy California's stepfather was drummer Ed Cassidy). The song was about as commercial a hit as they could write, but unquestionably a classic. A landmark blues rock riff in B and E major, a boogie piano echoing the chords, and it's a hip-swaying carefree beat with all kinds of hippie-idealism words:

Let me take you baby, down to the river bed
Got to tell you somethin', go right to your head
Cause I (I), I got a line,
I got a line on you babe.

Gotta put your arms around me
With every bit of your love
If you know what to do, I'll make love to you
Cause you got the right line to make it through these times
Cause I (I), I got a line,
I got a line on you babe.


There was no way this song was not going to blast off. It was just too good.

I am very surprised that more bands have not covered this, as this was about as perfect a 60's rock dance tune as there could be. Periodically, there'll be a video of something called Spirit 0f '84 on VH1 Classic, which seems to be most of the band playing "Got A Line On You" with a more percussive beat and other musicians sitting in (most visibly, ex-Steely Dan guitarist Jeff "Skunk" Baxter).

The Georgia garage rock band The Woggles do a terrific version that can be heard once in a while on Sirius Satellite Radio's Underground Garage channel.

But I did find two other notable covers which I have put below the original -- Alice Cooper in a heavy metal crank from the Iron Eagle II soundtrack from 1988, and blind guitarist Jeff Healey opening a 2005 Germany show with an absolute smoking overdriven version with his band.

ALICE COOPER (1988)

JEFF HEALEY (2005)

Creedence Clearwater Revival -- "Green River" (1969)

Creedence Clearwater Revival had me as far back as "Bad Moon Rising," which come to think of it, was only about nine months before "Green River" was released. I do not know how this band did it, but between 1968 and 1970, they cranked out five albums (with a couple more to come). Could you imagine anybody doing even two albums in one year today?

I'm not going to rehash the CCR phenomenon but really just to step back and analyze it. Four guys from San Francisco forging a "swamp rock" sound and mythology based on Southern blues, gospel and country music. No Southern roots at all. It's as if they had it in their souls, transported from another time. Even the lyrics were firmly based in the storytelling of folk songs one would not associate with northern California. Whatever gripped their souls to a sound like this was truly otherworldly.

The other part of the equation is that they were able to make millions of people around the globe believe it and fall in love with this music. Look at the video below from a 1970 London concert -- screaming and yelling at four regular guys dressed like they were ordinary flannel-shirted Joes from middle America who just got up that morning to play in a rock band. If you wanted jaw-dropping guitar solos, this was not the place. Everything was done so simply, full of down home feeling, that waiting for John Fogerty to shred was pointless.

Special mention must be made for that awesome Rickenbacker guitar Fogerty is playing in this video. Fogerty got full of himself later on, dismissing the roles of the other musicians, but I think he was dead wrong. The classic sound of CCR is a band effort. It was Doug Clifford on drums, Stu Cook on bass, and Tom Fogerty on rhythm guitar, and thank God the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame saw it that way too.

When I was a rock journalist for a spell in the mid-80's, I spent an evening hanging out with George Thorogood, discussing amongst other things this very band and he told me: "These guys had a sound that will never die."

"Green River" is definitely in my top three Creedence songs for almost cornball reasons: that E7 guitar riff that starts the song off and continues after every verse line, the blending of the C and A major chords throughout, the imagery of a "green river" to a kid growing up in a Queens suburb, and Fogerty's imagination of a comforting place where "if you get lost, come on home to Green River." You didn't need anything more to love a song like this.

The Temptations -- "Can't Get Next To You" (1969)

The Temptations are my favorite Motown group because I got into their style of "psychedelic soul." For all the trouble Stevie Wonder got for addressing contemporary topics, Temptations producer Norman Whitfield had no problem jumping right into poverty, crime, taxes and the Vietnam War.

However, there was nothing topical about "Can't Get Next To You." There was also nothing traditional about it either, since Whitfield created one of Motown heyday's most unusual arrangements in about two minutes and 30 seconds. I always put this song on my party tapes for guaranteed dancing.

The song doesn't even start off with music, but a door slowly creaking open, wild party screaming, and suddenly Dennis Edwards hushes them and says: "Hold it, hold it, listen...." There's a low slow and bluesy piano riff, and then a horn section does three powerful blasts, the piano does a quick little twist and then right into the song.

Way before the "pumping effect" was used in electronic music, Whitfield somehow created a similar effect with this driving beat and "suction" feel of the instrumentation. This is not the Temptations of "My Girl" and "Since I Lost My Baby," but their new era of fuzzy electric guitars and funky rhythms.


Each member of the Temptations takes a line of the verse, with practically no space in between, so it's wonderful to hear them showing off their individual styles:

(Dennis Edwards): I can turn a gray sky blue.
(Melvin Franklin): I can make it rain, whenever I wanted to.
Oh...
(Eddie Kendricks): I can build a castle from a single grain of sand.
(Paul Williams): I can make a ship sail, uh, on dry land.

After two verses, the song segues into the "train section," where the beat smoothes out into a major key break, and the Temps vocalize their "ooo" that it damn well sounds like a choo choo to me. Then right back to the beat with verse three, and a showstopping pause -- "Cos' I-I-I-I-I... woah, I-I-I-I-I...." and the group comes in like the military with "Can't get next to you!"

What is notable about the two videos below is that Eddie Kendricks is in one and missing in the other. Kendricks left the group to go solo in 1970, so this black and white live video must have been done at that time, considerably after the song was a hit. It's fun to see the group covering for Kendricks trademark falsetto lines.

Classics IV - "Spooky" and "Stormy" (1968)

The Classics IV were thankfully hip to diverse styles of music and that's what made them one of the more distinguished pop acts of the late 60's.

First of all, they had an outstanding production and songwriting team (who went on to work with the Atlanta Rhythm Section) who laid the fluff on lightly, with minimal if ever orchestration. There was some wit to the songwriting ("Spooky" especially had some nice metaphorical touches, suggesting that the narrator will "propose on Halloween"). They incorporated jazzy guitar chords, a little southern R&B, a soulful sax solo on every one of their hits, and an innovative use of the sitar that was riff-supporting as opposed to psychedelic.

As a matter of fact, despite there being a real band, I'm not quite sure of their involvement in the recording except for the unmistakable lead singing of Dennis Yost. There are not many singers who you can spot immediately, but nobody I know is similar to Yost -- sort of a soft Southern smoky tone, covered in wide open reverb.

Musically, "Spooky" and "Stormy" are like brother and sister -- related chord patterns, with the same 7-stroke guitar riff that the producers clearly loved they did it twice. "Spooky" is an E minor 7th ending on the G note, sliding to an A6th, ending on the F#. The chorus of "Stormy" is an E minor 9th ending on the F# going to the A major ending on the E note. Yes, I know this is technical razzmatazz, but to a musician, one can't help but notice the similarities.

Both songs had some notable cover versions -- you can hear Dusty Springfield's version on the soundtrack to the UK gangster flick Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, Santana added a Latin feel and many of those stratospheric up-the-neck solos on the 1978 Inner Secrets album, and inevitably in a salute to their origins, the Atlanta Rhythm Section did a fine honey-dripping version with octave guitar and electric piano solos on their 1979 Underdog album.

CLASSICS IV PERFORM "STORMY" ON TV


CLASSICS IV - "SPOOKY" (audio)


ATLANTA RHYTHM SECTION - "SPOOKY" (live, October 1989)


SANTANA - "STORMY" (audio)

The 10 Greatest Bubblegum Songs of the Late 60's

I spent all my elementary school years in the 60's and listened to a lot of WABC-AM and WMCA-AM radio. While there was plenty of great pop and rock music, I dropped right into the whole bubblegum music craze of the late 60's/early 70's. I could not avoid it and frankly, it was hard to resist, which is exactly what all these record producers and labels wanted.

I bought the singles by acts who were merely fictitious vehicles for these music executives to sell their acts. I thought they were real like everybody else!

How do I define bubblegum music? Under three minutes, "teenage subject matter" (usually girls), an element of silliness, simple chord structure, repetitive to the point of surrender. The song could be highly produced with horns or strings (Spanky and Our Gang's "Sunday Will Never Be The Same"), or garage-type rock (Any song by the 1910 Fruitgum Compnay or Ohio Express).

What is all the boy band music and Hanna Montana but modern variations on bubblegum music?

Sixties bubblegum was particularly unique in that the group names were ridiculous, especially the ones tied in with Saturday morning cartoon shows (The Wombles? The Cattanooga Cats?). Even the "boy detectives" The Hardy Boys had a bubblegum band (Frank Hardy on guitar, Joe Hardy on bass!). You also had the same producers coming out with different songs under different names, often with the same lead singer (Ron Dante sang lead on all The Archies songs, and then did the same on The Cuff Links "Tracy").

For further reading, the book on the topic is absolutely "Bubblegum Music Is The Naked Truth," still in print, with contributions from my west coast friend Becky Ebenkamp (check out her radio show here). For a modern appreciation of the genre, you must buy the fantastic power pop tribute Right To Chews.

I make no apologies for being a big fan of bubblegum music, especially when one consider The Ramones based a lot of their songs on the same catchy simple chord patterns, and even covered "Indian Giver" on their Ramonesmania compilation? You're telling me that the Cars didn't consciously rip off the beginning of "Yummy Yummy Yummy" for their first hit "Just What I Needed?"

So here is my list of the 10 greatest bubblegum songs of the 60's with some nifty videos below them (in no particular order):

1) Ohio Express -- "Chewy Chewy" (1968): This is the first bubblegum single that I had to buy. I was at a sixth grade party at some kid's house, the boys on one side of the room and the girls on the other, and somebody put this single on the phonograph. That was it, it was all over for me. The singer had this nasal quality to his voice, almost like he was holding his nose while singing the song. And for a sixth grader standing on the other side of the room from the girls, it was easy to dance to, as bad as my floor moves may have been. The Swedish power pop group The Yum Yums (how's that for a name?) did a heavy electrified cover of the song in the late 90's.

2) Crazy Elephant -- "Gimme Gimme Good Lovin'" (1969): I always thought they were called the Crazy Elephants, but their name turned out to be similar to Iron Butterfly. What is this song, two minutes? Driving beat, the trademark cheesy Farfisa organ, three chords! One of my absolute favorites, the first song I ever did in my home recording studio, and covered with drum machines and samples by cult producer Mitch Easter on the aforementioned Right To Chews record.

3) The Archies -- "Sugar Sugar" (1969): Let me quote Wikipedia's entry on the band... "The Archies are a garage band founded by Archie Andrews, Reggie Mantle, and Jughead Jones, a group of adolescent fictional characters of the Archie universe, in the context of the animated TV series, The Archie Show." I'm surprised they didn't refer to him as "Reginald Mantle." This first big hit by The Archies stayed at #1 for what seemed to be an eternity. Another song with just a few chords, a nicely distorted electric piano playing the chords, and what seems like a black soul singer's voice coming out of Betty's or Veronica's mouth!

4) Tommy Roe -- "Dizzy" (1969): Probably the most complex bubblegum hit of the era. The song changes key seamlessly about three or four times for each verse and chorus, and because of that, has this sort of "merry go round" feeling. Certainly memorable for that shuffle-beat drumming throughout the song, including a couple of solo breaks. Another great cover on Right to Chews, the one by Cliff Hillis, who uses distorted samples, synthesizers and a toy piano.

5) The Cowsills -- "The Rain, The Park and Other Things" (1967): Discussed at length on a previous post. A three-minute "teenage hippie symphony."




6) The Cuff Links -- "Tracy" (1969): Gee, why does Archie Andrews from the Archies sound remarkably similar to the singer of this single? Ron Dante overdubbing himself many times over for a ridiculously catchy song that also pushed the bubblegum envelope by changing keys several times. If there is any song that is a tribute to Dante's brilliant vocal skills, this is it.


7) Steam -- "Na Na, Hey, Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye)" (1969): Strangely, the one hit wonder that has had the longest-lived life, thanks to modern day sports. The song also marks one of the first successful uses of drum loops. Word has it that this song was made as a goof and the lyrics were never meant to be what they were. Yet, when you combine repetitiveness, catchiness and a good gimmick at the break (repeating the chorus over and over at low volume, building it until it's normal again), and oh yes that awesome drum loop, flukes do happen.

8) The Monkees -- "I'm A Believer" (1966): The ultimate real life bubblegum rock group, where auditions were held to create this group from scratch and go on to do a successful TV show, concert tours, albums and singles. The group members rebelled at one point because they wanted to play their own instruments and write their own songs. But this early hit written by Neil Diamond cemented their fame with another great fuzzy electric piano line, a country-type guitar lick, and Micky Dolenz' fun vocals. Smash Mouth's cover has nothing on the original.


9) The 1910 Fruitgum Company -- "Simon Says" (1968): Not exactly the most threatening sounding band name. I can picture the production team sitting in their offices coming up with the brainstorm of taking the kids' party game and turning it into a silly simple song. They took it all the way to the bank. At a time when there was the Watusi, the Twist and the Pony, it doesn't get anymore blatant than: Put your hands in the air, Shake them all about, Do it when Simon says, And you will never be out.


10) The Lemon Pipers -- "Green Tambourine" (1968): This is the biggest bubblegum hit which delved into psychedelia. Scratchy violins going up and down, prominent sitar playing, and weirdly echoed and altered vocals on the "Now listen while I play-y-y-y-yy."


THE OHIO EXPRESS -- "CHEWY, CHEWY"

The Archies - Sugar Sugar
Uploaded by scootaway

TOMMY ROE -- "DIZZY"


THE CUFF LINKS - "TRACY"


THE MONKEES -- "I"M A BELIEVER"


THE LEMON PIPERS -- "GREEN TAMBOURINE"

Crazy Elephant - Gimme Gimme Good Lovin'
Uploaded by phgabin

STEAM -- "NA NA HEY HEY (KISS HIM GOODBYE)

Led Zeppelin - "Living Loving Maid (She's Just A Woman)" (1969)

While shooting bumper pool at the East New York YMHA's teen lounge, this song thundered out of the jukebox (literally) and stopped everything. I walked over to peer behind the glass to see the red and green 45 spinning around playing this song. From then on, I was poking the request digits for this song, as it just blew me away every time.

To this day, I remember everything about this three-minute song that pushed a button for me: Robert Plant's untamed and biting vocals ("ohh, you got it!" at the end of Jimmy Page's guitar solo), the machine-like thump of John Bonham's drums, the building guitar chords after each chorus ("So you better lay your money dow-w-w-wn!") and that crazy lead figure that leads to "Living... loving... she's just a woman."

That was enough for me to scrape together enough money and buy the Led Zeppelin II at some department store that is probably long out of business (Korvettes?). I didn't have the greatest phonograph player when I was 12, but it didn't matter. I loved every second of this album and damn, this was the second longest drum solo on an album I had ever heard (next to Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida," of course). Right after "Living Loving Maid" was the hiss and crackle that lead to the soft acoustic strumming of "Ramble On." Still, this was by far the loudest record I owned at the time (not much competition at this point either with Seals & Crofts' Summer Breeze).

There are tons of online videos showing amateur guitarists demonstrating the riffs and solos of this song, and Lord knows how many cover bands, including this out-of-nowhere one from a local Canadian morning TV show that must have woken up the audience immediately. With no live Zeppelin videos, here's a nice homemade tribute which really is all about the song and definitely not the visuals.

John Fred & His Playboy Band - "Judy in Disguise" (1968)

For a quasi-novelty number, "Judy In Disguise" was still a great party song right through the late 80's. In those days, when was I renting the second floor of a three family home with two other friends in Briarwood, Queens, this song was mandatory on the party tapes. Like The Isley Brothers' "Shout" or The Rascals' "Good Lovin'," it was a blatant 60's -era song that wouldn't quit.

"Judy in Disguise" had its own variation of the tried-and-true bass motif based on the major 6th pattern, also employed artfully from Gary Lewis & The Playboys' "She's Just My Style" to Squeeze's "Black Coffee In Bed."

However, "Judy in Disguise" sped faster than any of those variations, with straight ahead drums and the snap of the snare. Much of the song's melody incorporated that major 6th pattern, going up in the first words ("Judy in disguise") and down the next few ("Hey that's what you are").

At first, it sounded like he was singing" Judy in the skies," a parody of The Beatles' "Lucy In The Sky (With Diamonds)" -- which it was. You could clap your hands, shake and shimmy as the horns powered out that major 6th riff, as an unusual set of high strings went front and center for the instrumental break. Those strings also suddenly went out of tune and psychedelic for a few seconds just before the last verse, a subtle dig at the orchestra crescendo of The Beatles' "A Day In The Life." Even the song's end had a detuned guitar following the solo lead vocal. This was probably one of the most cleverly arranged one hit wonders of the 60's.

If you read the lyrics, you realize that although it sounded nothing like the Beatles' classic "Lucy In The Sky," they were clearly poking fun at the Fab Four's more "out there" words:

Judy in disguise, well that's what you are
Lemonade pie with a brand new car
Cantalope eyes come to me tonight
Judy in disguise with glasses

Keep a-wearing your bracelets and your new rara
Cross your heart with your living bra
Chimney sweep sparrow with guise
Judy in disguise with glasses

Special attention, though, must be made to the vocals of John Fred, a stage name if there ever was one. He sounds like he's going to break out of control, with subtle vibe of horniness. His vocals are charged with confidence, but it seems like any second, he's going to go nuts. By the time the song hits that weird psychedelic break, with the dissonant strings going up and down, he's panting and moaning, so is he putting you on or not?

The video below is really hilarious and of the time, as it was shot on a local Cleveland pop TV show "Upbeat" that was clearly trying to be cool with some green lens effects. At least the band has horn players to play to the track, but where the hell is the drummer? And you've got to love the quick cutaway closeups of the individual musicians, who seem to have no idea what to do.

The Cowsills -- "The Rain, The Park and Other Things" (1967)

The 60's music vibe can mean many different things, from surf music and bubblegum to psychedelia and classic rock groups. The 60's was a watershed era for what might best be called "sunshine pop," uplifting melodies accompanied by bouncy orchestra arrangements, many harmonies and a happy vibe. Acts like The 5th Dimension, The Turtles, The Association, and undoubtedly, The Cowsills.

Often cited as the inspiration for the "Partridge Family" TV show, the Cowsills had two colossal hit singles, both having what may be called a "hippie vibe" for such straight all-American music and kids -- "The Rain, The Park and Other Things" and "Hair" (from the famous musical).

Like The Partridge Family, the father was M.I.A. All you saw were the mother and the grinning kids, looking like total straight arrows, with cute little sis making the cool dance moves.

There was something manufactured about the Cowsills. I mean, they didn't write these hit songs, and just seemed a little too cookie cutter to be true. There was also this weird Osmond family connection I always felt -- here's another group of white all-American siblings with amazing voices, except no Mormon thing happening. But in the 60's, a lot of pop music was very much manufactured by talented songwriters, producers and musicians, and it was just commonly accepted without a second thought (at least the Cowsills were really related, as opposed to The Monkees, who didn't know each other at all when they started).

If I had to pick the best of the "sunshine pop" of the 60's, this song would be right on top of that list. Starting with some rainfall sound effects, "The Rain, The Park and Other Things" was very much what Brian Wilson would have called a " teenage symphony" -- lush strings, cascading harps, echoed voices ("I knew, I knew, I knew, I knew..." "Happy, happy, happy, HAPPY!"), simple electric piano chords picking up the tempo into the chorus, a beat before the second verse ("I knew I had to say hello..."), and the harps rolling down and stopping to indicate it had "stopped raining" ("Suddenly the sun broke through/I turned around and she was gone....").

A little story of meeting a "flower girl" while it rained in the park in three minutes. Seriously brilliant.

I know the group eventually broke up, but young Susan Cowsill ended up singing in bands and backup on albums by roots rocker Dwight Twilley. She was also in a group with former Bangles guitarist Vicki Peterson called The Continental Drifters.

Below are The Cowsills performing the song on a video lifted from VH1. Next to eating Carvel, this is one song which is completely guaranteed to