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| "...well, worse for the wear." (WEWS-TV, Cleveland) |
The Hit
I was just reminded by a Stereogum article on The Lemon Pipers and their swing in “bubblegum pop” that Billy Bob Thornton played their 1968 hit, “Green Tambourine,” at a party in Season One of Fargo. That’s the TV show, obviously, not the movie. (And, at this point, I can’t tell whether I’m remembering that scene, or just picturing it.)
The song fits a scene like that, with its stumbling beat and those bright, sitar-soaked melodies slurring over it; call it a happy surface but with something out-of-tilt under it. It might have taken over No. 1 for just a week, but it had to claw over some now-classics to get there – e.g., Aretha Franklin’s “Chain of Fools” and The Beatles’ “Hello, Goodbye.” (And, hell yes, that’s who inspired the sitar; more later). It hit big enough to drag five kids out of college and onto the road. The Lemon Pipers played with some massive names – B. B. King and The James Gang (who beat them in an Ohio-state level battle of the bands in 1967) – and rubbed shoulders with Jimi Hendrix, Howlin’ Wolf and Paul McCartney in Manhattan night clubs.
Bassist Steve Walmsley recalled his “rock and roll moment.” Playing “Through With You” at San Francisco's Fillmore West, and on the same bill with Moby Grape, Traffic and Spirit, he looked off-stage to see Moby Grape’s Bob Mosley give him a thumbs up. Cincinnati Magazine’s excellent retrospective contains that anecdote, and many more. In all seriousness, it wouldn’t offend me in the least if you stopped reading this post right now, clicked over to that (link below) and read that instead. You will absolutely learn more. They did solid work.
The Rest of the Story
“Banging out simple block chords, the record producer sang the tunes that Buddah execs had in mind for their newest band. And as he did, the boys looked at one another and silently passed around the same thought: What is this shit?”
I was just reminded by a Stereogum article on The Lemon Pipers and their swing in “bubblegum pop” that Billy Bob Thornton played their 1968 hit, “Green Tambourine,” at a party in Season One of Fargo. That’s the TV show, obviously, not the movie. (And, at this point, I can’t tell whether I’m remembering that scene, or just picturing it.)
The song fits a scene like that, with its stumbling beat and those bright, sitar-soaked melodies slurring over it; call it a happy surface but with something out-of-tilt under it. It might have taken over No. 1 for just a week, but it had to claw over some now-classics to get there – e.g., Aretha Franklin’s “Chain of Fools” and The Beatles’ “Hello, Goodbye.” (And, hell yes, that’s who inspired the sitar; more later). It hit big enough to drag five kids out of college and onto the road. The Lemon Pipers played with some massive names – B. B. King and The James Gang (who beat them in an Ohio-state level battle of the bands in 1967) – and rubbed shoulders with Jimi Hendrix, Howlin’ Wolf and Paul McCartney in Manhattan night clubs.
Bassist Steve Walmsley recalled his “rock and roll moment.” Playing “Through With You” at San Francisco's Fillmore West, and on the same bill with Moby Grape, Traffic and Spirit, he looked off-stage to see Moby Grape’s Bob Mosley give him a thumbs up. Cincinnati Magazine’s excellent retrospective contains that anecdote, and many more. In all seriousness, it wouldn’t offend me in the least if you stopped reading this post right now, clicked over to that (link below) and read that instead. You will absolutely learn more. They did solid work.
The Rest of the Story
“Banging out simple block chords, the record producer sang the tunes that Buddah execs had in mind for their newest band. And as he did, the boys looked at one another and silently passed around the same thought: What is this shit?”
The “record producer” in that quote was Paul Leka, the guy Buddah Records assigned to take The Lemon Pipers where Buddah wanted them to go. He partnered with his Brill Building colleague, Shelley Pinz, to write “Green Tambourine.” (Tin Pan Alley never died.) Her conversation with a busker inspired the song – hence the clear busking influence – and, after the band recorded it, Leka whisked them back to Buddah’s Manhattan office, larded on the production (e.g., “soaring strings, Chinese bells, and a reverb echo to Browne’s distinct vibrato tenor”), and set it out into the world.
The band’s opinion of the song did not improve…
Understanding why requires taking a couple steps back. The Lemon Pipers started in Oxford, Ohio, (also, Miami University) when parts of three bands came together circa 1966. Bob Nave (keys) came over from The Wombats and William Albaugh (drums), Bill Bartlett (guitar) and Bob Dudek (bass) from Tony and the Bandits; the guy they recruited as a vocalist, Dale “Ivan” Browne, came over from Ivan & The Sabres (who, if I remember right, once opened for The Rolling Stones in Dayton, Ohio): that made them a five-piece, one that specialized in – and this is significant – “psychedelic blues rock.”
While one can’t say the whole project was doomed from the start, that is absolutely a fair question. Nothing I’ve read so far directly relates what prompted Buddah Records to sign The Lemon Pipers, but, at the time they signed them, they seemed to have two main goals: 1) the make Buddah the destination label for bubblegum pop (see, Lemon Pipers label-mates, Ohio Express), and 2) to thicken that sound with Beatles-inspired psychedelia. No one alleges any kind of bait-and-switch either; the “what is this shit?” quote above was the story of Leka pitching the band on what the label wanted before they signed. The only foul play I read about happened around issues with copyright and royalties. With Albaugh (the band’s leader) pushing at taking their one shot, the rest of the band shuffled their cold feet into line and they signed.
The Lemon Pipers recorded just two albums (that counted) with Buddah, Green Tambourine and Jungle Marmalade, both in 1968, and both highlighted the tension between what the band wanted to play – e.g., both from the sampler, “Fifty Year Void” the jam-epic, "Dead End Street/Half Light,” and even the band’s first stab at a single, the admittedly not as good “Turn Around a Take a Look" – and what the label gently-urged(-whilst-threatening-the-contract) them to play – e.g., “Jelly Jungle” and the genuinely execrable “Rice Is Nice.” In Buddah’s defense, those last two would be The Lemon Pipers’ only other hits, #51 and #46 on Billboard’s Top 100, respectively.
No, things did not improve. When the band showed up to play, say, The Mike Douglas Show, all admitted they would show up, “well, worse for the wear.” They refused to play “Rice Is Nice” outright before long (and you can see how much they hate it on, hey, The Mike Douglas Show), and would only play “Green Tambourine” when a contract told them to (that’s “a contract,” not “the contract”.) When they picked up their gold albums for those two songs, this happened:
“At a New York awards show where they received gold records for ‘Green Tambourine,’ the Pipers deliberately butchered ‘Rice Is Nice’ in front of horrified Buddah executives.”
It didn’t take long before drugs and booze combined with the wear of the road, losing money, and fighting their label and each other made the whole project unbearable. Browne left – fittingly, no one can entirely agree on how – they split with Buddah, and even the four-piece version was done after a couple more years of struggle (circa 1970). A few members stayed in the business – Bartlett, Walmsley and Nave reworked a Lead Belly tune called “Black Betty” that Bartlett later released in a project called Ram Jam (which hit #16 in 1977) – and Nave returned to Cincinnati for a long-term gig as a jazz station DJ, with a sideline in a blues band (The Blues Merchants). To loop back to that Cincinnati Magazine article, my favorite part might have been the parts that talked about their “real lives” – i.e., their lives after the band. They’re mostly normal people and they tell good stories; they're about 50/50 on happy memories. My personal favorite:
“’I’ll admit that ‘Green Tambourine’ was good, and Leka created a great orchestration for it,’ Browne says. ‘But the other stuff they made us record messed with my mind for years.’ But no hard feelings, Browne jokes. ‘Now I have a separation, and I’m not suicidal.’”
About the Sampler
I actually got to most of the songs on the sampler above – there are only 10 after all. Outside of those, I included a few songs that I liked more (“Hard Core” and “Stragglin’ Behind”) or less (a re-write of a Carole King/Gerry Geffen tune called “I Was Not Born to Follow”). “Love Beads & Meditation" came in as a “do you believe this shit?” offering, but one song deserves special attention. If The Lemon Pipers and Buddah Records ever saw eye-to-eye – and I have no evidence to say they did – I’d put my money on “Rainbow Tree.”
Source(s)
Wikipedia – The Lemon Pipers (always good for “just the facts” notes)
Cincinnati Magazine (2012)
Stereogum (2018 – about the single, but has good, not unkind notes on bubblegum pop)
Wikipedia – Buddah Records (link to label-mates, for context)
Wikipedia – Neil Bogart (executive at Buddah, founder of Casablanca Records)
Wikipedia – Casablanca Records (a pretty damn big one-time player in the biz)
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