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| How I like to see them after this. Ready, man. |
The Hit
Before starting, I want to acknowledge and celebrate my long-standing fondness for the Mamas & the Papas. As one member of the Starland Vocal Band told Songfacts, “People love to hear people singing in harmony - there's no two ways about it.” Guilty.
And that brings the story to Starland Vocal Band’s famous and storied single, “Afternoon Delight.” You know it, hell, you’ve probably laughed at, even if from that scene in Anchorman. (They even made a bonus video for it.)
After 12 second or so of a 12-string guitar dueling with a six-string, an languid rhythm combination kicks in, just enough to give the tune a bottom, but the vocals carry and raise it. I have to confess that I didn’t remember any of that (thanks, Anchorman), but it’s quite pretty, honestly, but giving a close listen to the lyrics…well, it complicates the experience.
The interviewee for that Songfacts interview (which, for the record, contains some fun notes on the song-writing process) was Jon Carroll, and whatever anyone feels about “Afternoon Delight” doesn’t hold a candle within a goddamn mile of what he’s got going on his in his head. From loving the song to never getting tired of performing it to worrying about what Morris Day (of Morris Day and the Time) thought of it to forever fretting about winding up as a punchline in 70s revival events, it’s possible Carroll has felt everything that it is possible to feel about Starland’s (yes) one hit. Before summing up all that - and it’s a pretty fun read - he summed it all up with this:
“I'm very proud of the song but I really had to live it down.”
Due to the numerous times “Afternoon Delight” has been treated as a punchline - e.g., Good Will Hunting mocked it, a Rolling Stone article about the shooting of a Tom Petty video somehow found a way to crap on it as “the top of the heap of wimp rock,” and so on - Carroll earned all of that sensitivity. And it does get strong reactions. While hunting for material for this post, I stumbled across a personal reflection on a site called Perfect Sound Forever that, apart from solid notes on consent, has some truly wonderful things to say about the song’s unsubtle sexual allusions:
“Even me, the gormless innocent, got it. First time. Here were the angelic voices of some apple-pie lovelies not just singing about rumpy-pumpy but celebrating it, rejoicing in the anticipation of a round of hide-the-sausage.”
The same author also passed on this truly eloquent note:
“Afternoon Delight’s” origin story is worthy of that history. The songwriter, Bill Danoff, aka, the Danoff noted above, lifted the title from a happy hour menu at a DC restaurant in Georgetown called Clyde’s. Based on what I read, it sounded like a bit of a haunt for Starland’s members. According to Wikipedia, Danoff came up with it while grabbing a bite with another band member, Margot Chapman, while his wife, Taffy Danoff, was in surgery for cervical cancer. What else? Ah, Danoff didn’t set out “to write an all-out sex song...I just wanted to write something that was fun and hinted at sex.” And yet Billboard rated it the 20th sexiest songs of all time in 2010…
The Rest of the Story
First, this quote from a 1976 Washington Post review is a fucking magical:
“I suspect the Starland Vocal Band is going to have a lot to do with the shape of pop music over the next few years. Pretty, professional, and free of menace, they do better what [The Mamas and The Papas] did first: use their voices as voices rather than as an excuse for somebody to play guitar.”
So long as I get noting that Circle Jerks slipped a cover of “Afternoon Delight” on their Golden Shower of Hits, I think that’s it for taking the piss. Now, a oral picture of the band, courtesy of Carroll:
“Margot was pretty shy the whole time but that was her role in the group - she was kind of the mysterious dark one. Taffy was kind of a cross between Bette Midler and Grace Slick, and Bill was the mastermind songwriter. I was the vivacious kid who looked like Kristy McNichol.”
Starland Vocal Band started circa 1969 with Danoff and Taffy Nivert - who later became Taffy Danoff (see: cervical cancer above) - and not with that name. They came up in The Cellar Door, a Washington, D.C. area folk venue/local-market magnet for songwriters (including Tom Waits, apparently). The married duo performed there as Fat City and they drew enough notice to get a recording deal. They put out two albums as Fat City (Reincarnation and Welcome to Fat City), then two more as Bill & Taffy (Pass It On and Aces), all of that was, 1) before 1974, and 2) not what really got them started.
Both Danoffs did some songwriting for other people, and they wrote a couple big ones with/for John Denver, first “I Guess He’d Rather Be in Colorado,” then one of his biggest and the future state song of West Virginia, “Take Me Home Country Road.” That work gave Denver the confidence to sign the Danoffs to his Windsong label in 1975; related, that relationship made business sense out of promoting Fat City - as he did when he invited them onto a TV Special to play “Country Road” with him. Meanwhile, back at The Cellar Door…
The Danoffs caught Carroll playing a duet with a (different, I think) friend at The Cellar Door and, seeing the talent and liking his voice, they brought in the 18-year-old from nearby Fredericksburg, VA, to do some session work for Fat City/Bill & Taffy. One mid-1970s night, and after Carroll went to Florida for college, Bill Danoff saw a chance to form the vocal group that, as related to an outlet called Boundary Stones, he’d toyed around with starting for a couple years. They’d been collecting talent for a bit - Chapman won the role - and they saw Carroll as the final piece. About the name, I know the story - e.g., they wanted to acknowledge Washington, DC without straight-up saying, so they came up with a “sort of imaginary place” called “Starland,” inspired by, y’know, all the stars on the flags everywhere - but “Starland Vocal Band” does not seem like the obvious outcome for that project.
They threw together the debut album - which included “Afternoon Delight” - which left only the work of promoting it, a process that often begins with identifying the lead single. While Windsong’s promo people indisputably got it right, Carroll didn’t see it coming. Per his delightfully representative comment:
“But ‘Afternoon Delight’ is not the kind of record for someone who wants to be perceived as a bad-ass rock and roller. It's not cool to like that record, right? I was 18 when we recorded it, and it came out and I couldn't believe that they chose it as a single…We had another record on that album called ‘Hail! Hail! Rock And Roll!,’ and to me it grooved better and I could wail on it. I thought it would be the first single because it rocked - I kind of liked it.” [Ed. - Carroll exaggerates about looking like Kristy McNichol and how much that song “rocked.”]
Released smack in the middle of summer - and right in the thick of the American 1976 Bicentennial frenzy (think fireworks) - “Afternoon Delight” didn’t just soar up the charts: it became one of those dreaded songs people couldn’t avoid, aka, the kind of song that makes a grown man throw things at a radio (real anecdote). Grammy nominations followed - four in all - including a nomination for Best New Artist in 1977…which they won by beating out Boston, yes, the band. The summer of ’76 saw Starland Vocal Group hit the big time. Where the choices get tricky…
They’d already recorded a follow-up album - Rear View Mirror (the only other one I had access to, fyi) - but still had to answer the rather big question of, what next? Somehow, an offer to do a six-episode summer variety TV show for CBS landed in their lap, and that’s what management and the promo people pushed them to do. Carroll makes it pretty clear he still thinks they had a better shot at building an audience by touring than by going for the broader market via TV - related, he didn’t think much of the show - but The Starland Vocal Band Show is a fun little artifact, even if just for the people who created it: “David Letterman was a writer and regular on the show, which also featured Mark Russell, Jeff Altman, and Proctor and Bergman. April Kelly was a writer for the series.”
“Starland was quite a frustrating four years. We did four records but it was like we were running with ankle weights on the whole time because we weren't taken seriously.”
What can I say? Carroll gives dynamite quotes. Starland Vocal Band lingered more than it lasted from there, putting out two more albums (Late Nite Radio and 4 X 4), plus a Christmas album (Christmas at Home, and, yes, Christmas albums aren’t real albums) before calling it quits in 1981. They had another minor hit - “Loving You With My Eyes” (from Late Nite Radio) - but nothing caught fire. On a semi-tragic note, both couples split, Champan and Carroll in 1982, the Danoffs on 1983…and it’s only now I realize that I never mentioned Chapman and Carroll getting married.
About the Sampler
Despite having only two albums to work with, I stretched the sampler to 10 songs - and I think it works. It includes the “dueling singles” from their eponymous debut, plus an even split between that and Rear View Mirror. Carroll rated the follow-up - represented here by “Liberated Woman,” “Norfolk,” “Too Long a Journey,” (the ABBA-esque) “St. Croix Silent Night,” and the somber (and pick of the bunch) “Fallin’ in a Deep Hole” - but I think their debut had their best with one of the songs noted above, “Starting All Over Again,” (the frankly elegant) “Starland,” and the song they played as an encore for the early tours, “American Tune” (which is pure a capella rearrangement).
Whatever I think of the music (also, I’ll admit it, they drew me in on a couple), this one was fun. And, in case you’re wondering, Morris Day told Carroll he really liked it. Which was nice, because Carroll’s a fan of Day’s. Overall, I think the affection is genuine, for all the places it comes from.
Till the next one...
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