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| This good, but different... |
The Hit
You know this one - “Get Together,” an anthem of a generation - but it’s got a better story than you’d expect (more later) and, if you haven’t really looked at the lyrics lately, they are a big pile of good and rare things: stirring, beautiful, hopeful. Spending 20 years or so in a jaded funk meant missing all that, but, in my defense, there was always something about the way so much of the peace-‘n’-love crowd aged into grasping Reaganite boomers that made the whole thing come off as a con.
I’ve always liked the patient, steady timing on that lead guitar part, though, for its subtle sense of forward momentum, the idea of walking toward the ideal of the lyrics. A melodic loping bass line and sustained electric piano notes percolate underneath while a succession of guitar flourishes dance around the lead. And that famous chorus makes you want to pass a Coke and a smile to everyone until we all arrive at the big, calm Kumbaya that just about all of us would kill for right now...
As much as they loved it, The Youngbloods waited two years for anyone to care about that song and, when they finally did - only after the members of the National Council of Christians and Jews heard the song as a WABC-AM promo and decided to use it, appropriately, in radio and television ads - they had new material to promote, better material too, only to walk off Johnny Carson's Tonight Show when he wouldn't let them promote it. And the song’s story goes back even further, all the way to Bob Dylan descending on Greenwich Village...but somewhat indirectly.
The Rest of the Story
I’m going to start with The Youngbloods as a band. One of them, Jesse Colin Young, started as a solo artist in Greenwich Village’s folk scene. With two albums under his belt (of which I’ve only heard one song), he found he was playing more around Cambridge and Boston, MA, than in his adopted New York City; the former had more venues, for one. Another guitarist, Jerry Corbitt, saw him play once and kept showing up at enough shows after that they started playing together whenever Young came up to Boston. After hitting it off, they made it official and Corbitt called in musicians he’d met around his neighborhood, starting with (I think) drummer Joe Bauer and, later, Lowell “Banana” Levinger (electric piano/guitar), who they talked into leaving another band that wasn’t going anywhere.
They’d recorded two full LPs before too long - the expected eponymous debut in 1967 - which featured “Get Together” and an essentially similar second album in the same year, which they named Earth Music. It’s all polished material, very polished even, because they knew how to put together the same kind of tangled melodies that makes “Get Together” play so warm in the ears. They stretched in a couple directions away from that center for Earth Music - toward the 50s/blues guitar on “Monkey Business,” the funk organ-fronted jam vibes of “Long & Tall,” and the dirtier-blues stylings on “I Can Tell” - and it worked. And showed some ambition. OK, time to talk about that song.
“Get Together” was written by another Greenwich Village gad-about named Chet Powers and, swimming in that sea, he wrote it as a folk song. It took reading this delightful history of the song - one that I’m about to butcher in the service of time, but it’s worth reading - and learning that Powers performed as Dino Valenti to run down any version at all of this song, never mind the original one, but I did find a version of Valenti performing it live (call it The Curse of Dylan, i.e., just because Mr. Zimmerman can sing like that…). And it’s very clearly his song.
Powers relocated to San Francisco in the early-mid-1960s in search of a more attentive audience. Right around the time he found his feet and some people to play with, he got arrested for possession and sent to…Folsom Prison. Wow. For pot. Marijuana. He sold the rights to “Get Together” the Kingston Trio’s manager, a guy named Frank Werber. The Kingston Trio released it, their version is…fine for the right room - e.g., Eisenhower white, really into the clipped clarity of pitch-perfect note. The rights kept bouncing around the Bay Area, first to We Five, whose pass at the same song…love the spirit, and next to Jefferson Airplane (yes, that one). They took a good pass at it, the musical choices are solid, consistent, good quality all around, but…no, The Youngbloods squeezed out the diamond. Even if I can’t say that’s how it had to sound, I’ve never heard anyone do it better. Now, back to the band…
Circa 1967, The Youngbloods had established a residency at the Café Au Go Go, NYC and, one night before opening, Young heard another musician named Buzzy Linhart singing “Get Together.” He badgered him for the lyrics, Linhart happily complied, and Young puzzled out the melody from there. The band had its hit…albeit two years early. It did reach No. 62 on the Billboard in 1967, but the lead track on the same album, “Grizzly Bear,” topped it. The more momentous thing happened in June of 1967, when a good concert in San Francisco became a great day when they got back to their hotel room to hear their “Get Together” playing on the radio. New York had started to feel like a dead-end, so…
The whole plot resolves (also, bravo), when the band relocates to San Francisco, Corbitt abruptly departs, and The Youngbloods put out, bluntly, one of the best albums I’ve heard during this whole damn project. I rank it up there with Buffalo Springfield.
A couple stagnant years in New York and that really great day/concert in San Francisco lured The Youngbloods to the Bay Area, where they bunkered down to write their best, bravest album to date…and then Corbitt left the band. Because the reason he left hasn’t come up yet, I’m guessing they’d mention it if it was important, so I’m going with simple burn-out, maybe homesickness. The Youngbloods carried on as a trio and, as for what happened next, I can’t improve on this (from which I copied too much (but with respect!) for this):
“There they found greater acceptance among the local rock aficionados, and set out to make their third album for RCA, which would be titled Elephant Mountain (named after an actual peak near Pt. Reyes Station in Marin County, north of San Francisco, where the band, now reduced to a trio with the departure of Corbitt, resided). With Charlie Daniels producing, the album, despite its underwhelming chart performance, gave the Youngbloods a large credibility boost—today it is considered not only the band’s finest but a sleeper classic of the era, with jazz-informed songs like “Ride the Wind,” “Sunlight,” “Darkness, Darkness,” “Quicksand” and “Beautiful” receiving massive amounts of airplay on the FM rock stations of the day.”
First, yes, that Charlie Daniels - also, described as “in a rayon suit with short hair and milk bottle-bottom glasses,” amen. To second the author of that interview (and it’s damned solid), Elephant Mountain is a snob’s delight, pure crank for the lovers of variety. Also, I added “Sham,” “Trillium,” and, for my love of risk-taking/pretension (always more, please), “On Sir Francis Drake.” For those counting the songs/links, yes, I’d call this a good album experience, equal parts indulgence and pop. It’s just well-constructed music by talented people and, in practical terms, all the things I didn’t like in any given song never lasted that long. Think a good jam band, only with restraint. It’s dated, absolutely. Only people who like the time, tone and sound will like it, but I also rate it an above-average fit for that crowd. This was a talented, dedicated, and, in a shocker for a project where I see more borrowing than creating, original band.
I had fun with this one. The band was both talented and real, I liked the material (well enough), and the song had its own romantic-tension-addled story. Big win for me, hope anyone who finds this feels the same.
About the Sampler
Sprinkled in and amongst the above, plus a couple from one of The Youngbloods’ final two studio albums, High on a Ridge Top (they’ve got live shit out the yin-yang, ht: old friend from high school), “Speedo” (cover of a Cadillacs hit, which just came up in this post) and “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window.” Shit, and damn my eyes! I missed a couple favorites from above-scorned eponymous debut: "Statesboro Blues" (personal fave) and "Four in the Morning" (mostly because I'm assuming it's dirty and I'm cheap). They went with a lot of covers for those last two albums, for some reason, but they stuck to their spin on things, the hallmark of artists who are confident in what they do.
You know this one - “Get Together,” an anthem of a generation - but it’s got a better story than you’d expect (more later) and, if you haven’t really looked at the lyrics lately, they are a big pile of good and rare things: stirring, beautiful, hopeful. Spending 20 years or so in a jaded funk meant missing all that, but, in my defense, there was always something about the way so much of the peace-‘n’-love crowd aged into grasping Reaganite boomers that made the whole thing come off as a con.
I’ve always liked the patient, steady timing on that lead guitar part, though, for its subtle sense of forward momentum, the idea of walking toward the ideal of the lyrics. A melodic loping bass line and sustained electric piano notes percolate underneath while a succession of guitar flourishes dance around the lead. And that famous chorus makes you want to pass a Coke and a smile to everyone until we all arrive at the big, calm Kumbaya that just about all of us would kill for right now...
As much as they loved it, The Youngbloods waited two years for anyone to care about that song and, when they finally did - only after the members of the National Council of Christians and Jews heard the song as a WABC-AM promo and decided to use it, appropriately, in radio and television ads - they had new material to promote, better material too, only to walk off Johnny Carson's Tonight Show when he wouldn't let them promote it. And the song’s story goes back even further, all the way to Bob Dylan descending on Greenwich Village...but somewhat indirectly.
The Rest of the Story
I’m going to start with The Youngbloods as a band. One of them, Jesse Colin Young, started as a solo artist in Greenwich Village’s folk scene. With two albums under his belt (of which I’ve only heard one song), he found he was playing more around Cambridge and Boston, MA, than in his adopted New York City; the former had more venues, for one. Another guitarist, Jerry Corbitt, saw him play once and kept showing up at enough shows after that they started playing together whenever Young came up to Boston. After hitting it off, they made it official and Corbitt called in musicians he’d met around his neighborhood, starting with (I think) drummer Joe Bauer and, later, Lowell “Banana” Levinger (electric piano/guitar), who they talked into leaving another band that wasn’t going anywhere.
They’d recorded two full LPs before too long - the expected eponymous debut in 1967 - which featured “Get Together” and an essentially similar second album in the same year, which they named Earth Music. It’s all polished material, very polished even, because they knew how to put together the same kind of tangled melodies that makes “Get Together” play so warm in the ears. They stretched in a couple directions away from that center for Earth Music - toward the 50s/blues guitar on “Monkey Business,” the funk organ-fronted jam vibes of “Long & Tall,” and the dirtier-blues stylings on “I Can Tell” - and it worked. And showed some ambition. OK, time to talk about that song.
“Get Together” was written by another Greenwich Village gad-about named Chet Powers and, swimming in that sea, he wrote it as a folk song. It took reading this delightful history of the song - one that I’m about to butcher in the service of time, but it’s worth reading - and learning that Powers performed as Dino Valenti to run down any version at all of this song, never mind the original one, but I did find a version of Valenti performing it live (call it The Curse of Dylan, i.e., just because Mr. Zimmerman can sing like that…). And it’s very clearly his song.
Powers relocated to San Francisco in the early-mid-1960s in search of a more attentive audience. Right around the time he found his feet and some people to play with, he got arrested for possession and sent to…Folsom Prison. Wow. For pot. Marijuana. He sold the rights to “Get Together” the Kingston Trio’s manager, a guy named Frank Werber. The Kingston Trio released it, their version is…fine for the right room - e.g., Eisenhower white, really into the clipped clarity of pitch-perfect note. The rights kept bouncing around the Bay Area, first to We Five, whose pass at the same song…love the spirit, and next to Jefferson Airplane (yes, that one). They took a good pass at it, the musical choices are solid, consistent, good quality all around, but…no, The Youngbloods squeezed out the diamond. Even if I can’t say that’s how it had to sound, I’ve never heard anyone do it better. Now, back to the band…
Circa 1967, The Youngbloods had established a residency at the Café Au Go Go, NYC and, one night before opening, Young heard another musician named Buzzy Linhart singing “Get Together.” He badgered him for the lyrics, Linhart happily complied, and Young puzzled out the melody from there. The band had its hit…albeit two years early. It did reach No. 62 on the Billboard in 1967, but the lead track on the same album, “Grizzly Bear,” topped it. The more momentous thing happened in June of 1967, when a good concert in San Francisco became a great day when they got back to their hotel room to hear their “Get Together” playing on the radio. New York had started to feel like a dead-end, so…
The whole plot resolves (also, bravo), when the band relocates to San Francisco, Corbitt abruptly departs, and The Youngbloods put out, bluntly, one of the best albums I’ve heard during this whole damn project. I rank it up there with Buffalo Springfield.
A couple stagnant years in New York and that really great day/concert in San Francisco lured The Youngbloods to the Bay Area, where they bunkered down to write their best, bravest album to date…and then Corbitt left the band. Because the reason he left hasn’t come up yet, I’m guessing they’d mention it if it was important, so I’m going with simple burn-out, maybe homesickness. The Youngbloods carried on as a trio and, as for what happened next, I can’t improve on this (from which I copied too much (but with respect!) for this):
“There they found greater acceptance among the local rock aficionados, and set out to make their third album for RCA, which would be titled Elephant Mountain (named after an actual peak near Pt. Reyes Station in Marin County, north of San Francisco, where the band, now reduced to a trio with the departure of Corbitt, resided). With Charlie Daniels producing, the album, despite its underwhelming chart performance, gave the Youngbloods a large credibility boost—today it is considered not only the band’s finest but a sleeper classic of the era, with jazz-informed songs like “Ride the Wind,” “Sunlight,” “Darkness, Darkness,” “Quicksand” and “Beautiful” receiving massive amounts of airplay on the FM rock stations of the day.”
First, yes, that Charlie Daniels - also, described as “in a rayon suit with short hair and milk bottle-bottom glasses,” amen. To second the author of that interview (and it’s damned solid), Elephant Mountain is a snob’s delight, pure crank for the lovers of variety. Also, I added “Sham,” “Trillium,” and, for my love of risk-taking/pretension (always more, please), “On Sir Francis Drake.” For those counting the songs/links, yes, I’d call this a good album experience, equal parts indulgence and pop. It’s just well-constructed music by talented people and, in practical terms, all the things I didn’t like in any given song never lasted that long. Think a good jam band, only with restraint. It’s dated, absolutely. Only people who like the time, tone and sound will like it, but I also rate it an above-average fit for that crowd. This was a talented, dedicated, and, in a shocker for a project where I see more borrowing than creating, original band.
I had fun with this one. The band was both talented and real, I liked the material (well enough), and the song had its own romantic-tension-addled story. Big win for me, hope anyone who finds this feels the same.
About the Sampler
Sprinkled in and amongst the above, plus a couple from one of The Youngbloods’ final two studio albums, High on a Ridge Top (they’ve got live shit out the yin-yang, ht: old friend from high school), “Speedo” (cover of a Cadillacs hit, which just came up in this post) and “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window.” Shit, and damn my eyes! I missed a couple favorites from above-scorned eponymous debut: "Statesboro Blues" (personal fave) and "Four in the Morning" (mostly because I'm assuming it's dirty and I'm cheap). They went with a lot of covers for those last two albums, for some reason, but they stuck to their spin on things, the hallmark of artists who are confident in what they do.
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