One Hit No More, No. 13: The Standells, "Dirty Water" From a Different Town

That looks pretty goddamn must-see to me.

I think I can sum up the proto-garage/proto-punk Los-Angeles-based band, The Standells, in two quotes and one long-form fact.

“The Standells’ band name was created by Larry Tamblyn, derived from standing around booking agents' offices trying to get work.” (source)

“I got this big slab of meat and like any kid I wanted to have catchup on it. I'll never forget Jagger said: ‘You bloody Yankee...’ (Laughs). He didn't use the word bloody. He used a four letter word there.” (source)

The Standells are best-known for the song, “Dirty Water,” lately adopted as a Boston, Mass anthem. Even with all the guys who passed in and out of the line-up before and during their days on the main stage, not even one of them had stepped foot in Boston, never mind hailed from there. The song was written by Ed Cobb, their producer when they landed at Capitol Records, and finally found a good fit. The inspiration for the song came from Cobb getting mugged while crossing over the Charles River. It’s a good song, or at least I like it. I wouldn’t put it on a playlist, but it’s the first song on the list of one-hit wonders I’m mining for this One-Hit No More project that actually sounds like the kind of music I’ve gravitated toward for most of my adult life.

Authenticity, or something close enough to it, has been a big touch-stone in the music I like, so that's a healthy lesson for me. That’s where the quotes come in: based on my limited research, The Standells come off as a nice bunch of kids who wanted to get famous playing rock ‘n’ roll. As much as Tamblyn, who played keyboards and took over vocals when Dick Dodd wasn’t around, sticks up for their contributions, nothing suggests The Standells as the project of a musical visionary. They had enough material to play long-running residencies at places called P.J.’s and the Peppermint Lounge (wait…am I crossing up that name?), which means they paid their dues and earned as working musicians. They could play instruments and, per Tamblyn, rearrange Cobb’s original composition to their liking, but they had more taste and awareness than artistic ambition.

For reference (finally), The Standells recorded “Muddy Water” in 1965, but it didn’t chart until 1966. (The anecdote about Mick Jagger comes from their cross-country tour with The Stones, around the same time.).The band formed as early as 1962, but the line-up rarely stabilized, even in their hey-day. Tamblyn was the anchor, but the main thing to know is that, at the time “Dirty Water” and all the travelling with The Stones happened, the band included Dodd (vox/drums), Tamblym (keyboard), Tony Valentino (guitarist), and Gary Lane (bass).

Dodd’s an interesting story – and (again, limited research) he feels like what people made the band tick. He started in show-biz early – “he was the Mouseketeer known as Dickie,” opposite Annette (Fucking) Funicello – and, when you see the band interviewed by Dick Clark on American Bandstand, you see, first, Dodd’s lady-killer looks and, second, his ease on camera (after that, ignore the date, because 1964 doesn't fit any other time-line I've encountered). His vocals became part of The Standells’ hook and, according to Tamblyn, their legacy:

“He had that direct contact with the punk in all of us. Of course Punk Rock didn't exist back then or Garage Rock. I attribute that to Ed Cobb more than anything. He was our producer. He really brought that out in Dick.”

Sadly, the coda for that modest moment comes two sentences later:

“They have "Standells Live". It's on Sundazed (Records). If you listen to Dick sing "Dirty Water" on that, he doesn't sound the same. He sounds kind of the same, but it's not that real punkish type of thing.”

To finally move on to the music, I’ve spent the last week listening to a lot of The Standells - most of it between Dirty Water (Expanded Edition) and The Standells: The Punk Band of the 60s (and, depending on your interpretation of "punk," you will or will not find yourself deeply disappointed). I’ve forgotten most of it in the same amount of time. A couple songs have a certain pizzazz – e.g. “There’s a Storm Coming” and “Medication,” and their “Batman” has a certain “risqué” (better, throw-back risqué) campiness to it – but, outside better vocal range, I see nothing to recommend their version of “Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White” over the first version I heard (but that's a great song, no matter who sings it...well). More to the point, the rest of it mostly keeps piling on as a combination of more of the same and the same desperate reaches that defined their early career.

The Standells up lived up to their reputation for standing around all day with the run of shows they’d appear on as stand-ins for The Beatles. They came by the look naturally – Lane, apparently, had access to European publications and clocked the trends – but when they appeared on The Munstersactually singing “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” and as some weird knock-off foot-shuffling knock-off called The Love Bugs on the Bing Crosby show, that kind of thing announces your priorities. They had a surprisingly long-life on screen – see the famous (infamous?) Riot at the Sunset Strip, where Dodd appeared “on camera during the opening credits of a low-budget exploitation movie of the same name” (here's their title track for it) – and it says something that they lasted almost as long there as they did as a band.

In case anyone’s confused, I’m not bothered by what The Standells did professionally – and what they continued to do all the way til playing SXSW 2012, and beyond. I also think that, in the same way Larry Tamblyn deserved to call the band “Larry Tamblyn & The Standels” (one “L,” even if I can’t remember where), I think Ed Cobb deserves his name on the marquee with The Standells. To his very real credit, Tamblyn credits him for writing “Muddy Water” as recently as a 2013 interview with Dirty Water Media that is entirely worth the time of willing participants. They got famous (enough; Dodd was driving limos to make ends meet shortly before he died), but the reason they burned out was precisely because they weren’t the driving force behind their own music…

…and, 13 chapters in, I’m starting to wonder how often I’ll see that in this project.