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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.
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.
