The Lovin' Spoonful - Biography
In 1965-66, The Lovin’ Spoonful were very much the East Coast equivalent of Los Angeles’ folk-rock hitmakers The Byrds — right down to the attention-getting eyewear favored by the bands’ front men. Some members of the New York-based group sported roots similar to those of their California counterparts, who arrived on the charts mere months earlier. Like The Byrds’ Roger McGuinn and David Crosby, the Spoonful’s John Sebastian and Zal Yanovsky were products of the early-‘60s commercial folk scene. Teaming up with the Long Island rhythm section of Steve Boone and Joe Butler, they created an engaging fusion of rootsy folk and winsome pop that connected immediately with teen listeners. Their first seven singles made the national top 10.
All of those hits were written or co-written by Sebastian. The Brooklyn-born singer-guitarist had worked in rock bands during his prep-school days, but while he was still in his teens he began hitting the still-lively folk scene in Greenwich Village, backing such performers as the Florida-bred singer-songwriter Fred Neil (who would later be indirectly saluted in the song “Coconut Grove, on the album Hums of The Lovin’ Spoonful). A busy folk session musician, Sebastian was valued as a fine harmonica player, and he also showed facility on the autoharp, the traditional stringed instrument with a distinctive, almost harp-like sound.
Sebastian took a stab at solo recording with his Lower Manhattan neighbor, an ex-folkie and aspiring producer named Erik Jacobsen, who also managed the gifted but drug-plagued singer-songwriter Tim Hardin. Sometime in 1964, Sebastian and Jacobsen befriended guitarist Yanovsky, a former member of the commercial folk trio The Halifax Three and, more recently, one-fourth of another folk unit including his ex-Halifax colleague Denny Doherty and the corpulent, big-voiced Cass Elliot. That outfit, known variously as Cass Elliot and The Big Three and The Mugwumps, disbanded in late ’64; Elliot and Doherty would soon join husband-and-wife émigrés John and Michelle Phillips in LA, in the massive successful pop group The Mama’s & The Papa’s.
Yanovsky threw in his hand with Sebastian. The pair, like many of their colleagues on the folk scene, was enchanted by the music of The Beatles, and they perceived commercial possibilities beyond the folk music horizon. They recruited bassist Steve Boone and drummer Joe Butler, veterans of Long Island rock acts like The Sell Outs, and began honing their electric set at the Village’s Night Owl Café. They took their name, The Lovin’ Spoonful, from a lyric by Mississippi John Hurt, the rediscovered ‘20s bluesman who Sebastian had backed on some club dates.
The group’s folk-rock sound initially found no takers at the New York labels; though producer Phil Spector was an enthusiastic early fan, his extravagant studio technique was deemed at odds with the group’s folk-based approach. The Spoonful came close to signing with Elektra Records, the New York folk label then making its first inroads into the rock marketplace. Sebastian was close to the label, where he had worked on many sessions. But, according to Elektra president Jac Holzman memoir Follow the Music, a deal with the publishing arm of the pop label Kama Sutra Records scotched the agreement. The Spoonful would belatedly appear on the compilation What’s Shakin’ (1966), which also featured early work by Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood.
The Elektra set included a Sebastian original, “Good Time Music,” whose lyric would spawn the rubric for The Lovin’ Spoonful’s effervescent sound. The band’s tack was exemplified by their debut Kama Sutra single, which made its chart debut in August 1965. Recorded at Jacobsen’s initial demo session, “Do You Believe in Magic” was an immediately indelible number that rode the novel interplay of Sebastian’s autoharp and Yanovsky’s guitar and a feel-good lyric about the joys of rock ‘n’ roll. The single leaped up the charts that summer, peaking at No. 9. The band, with Sebastian staring out through his wire-rimmed glasses and hugging his autoharp, quickly became a staple of network TV rock shows.
The Spoonful’s debut LP Do You Believe in Magic (1965) mated a handful of wistful Sebastian originals like “Younger Girl” (later covered by The Critters and The Hondells) and “Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind” (which belatedly became a No. 2 hit in 1966) with a brace of folk-blues numbers originally recorded by the likes of Henry Thomas, Jim Jackson, and Gus Cannon. (The purported “traditional” song “Sportin’ Life” owed an unacknowledged but very obvious debt to “Night Life,” the 1963 Ray Price hit penned by Willie Nelson.) Sebastian’s old colleague Fred Neil got his due in a cover of “The Other Side of This Life.”
The band ended 1965 with “You Didn’t Have to Be So Nice,” a surging autoharp-driven number, similar to “…Magic,” that climbed to No. 10 on the singles chart. They followed it early in the new year with “Daydream,” a loping pop reverie assembled by producer Jacobsen from scraps of blown takes. It became the band’s biggest hit to date, reaching No. 2. The subsequent LP Daydream (1966) made it to No. 10 on the album chart; while the songs paid homage to the group’s roots in blues (“Warm Baby”) and old time music (“Jug Band Music”), 11 of the collection’s 12 songs were originals.
The Lovin’ Spoonful reached their commercial peak in the summer of 1966 with their seasonal single “Summer in the City.” The unsung heroes of that unforgettable, uncharacteristically hard-rocking hit -- produced by Jacobsen and engineered by Roy Halee (of Simon & Garfunkel fame) -- were session keyboardist Artie Schroeck, who played the song’s keyboard hook, and an unnamed sound effects man, who created the montage of car horns and jackhammers that conjured the atmosphere of the humid New York streets so effectively. The 45 was No. 1 for three weeks, and was inescapable on top 40 radio that summer. Two other top 10 singles followed that year: “Rain On the Roof” (No. 10) and “Nashville Cats,” a homage to Music City pickers that memorably erred by naming the titular town, and not Memphis, as the home of rockabilly and country’s famed “yeller Sun records.”
Two Lovin’ Spoonful albums reached the charts in late 1966: What’s Up, Tiger Lily?, the soundtrack for Woody Allen’s dubbed Japanese spy spoof, and Hums of The Lovin’ Spoonful, which compiled the year’s hits.
Yanovsky and Boone’s highly publicized San Francisco bust for marijuana possession in late ’66 marked the beginning of the end of the guitarist’s tenure in the group he co-founded. Yanovsky remained on board long enough to complete You’re a Big Boy Now (1967), the soundtrack album for a coming-of-age comedy helmed by a new young director, Francis Ford Coppola; the LP contained the lovely ballad “Darling Be Home Soon,” a No. 15 single. The Best of the Lovin’ Spoonful (1967) was released as a stop-gap measure; it reached No. 3, and would be the band’s highest-charting album.
For Everything Playing (1968), guitarist-producer-arranger Jerry Yester — a former member of The Modern Folk Quartet (which also spawned Henry Diltz, the Spoonful’s photographer) — was recruited to replace Yanovsky. The album, nominally produced by Joe Wissert after a split with Erik Jacobsen, reflected the extravagant studio experimentation of the day. Its singles “Six O’Clock” (No. 18 nationally) and “She is Still a Mystery” (No. 27) were boldly arranged with strings and horns. The set even contained a Steve Boone instrumental, “Forever,” that was recorded in the lush style of The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. The album failed dismally, rising no further than No. 118.
Front man Sebastian soon split with his band to pursue a career more in line with his folk origins. The Lovin’ Spoonful’s final studio album Revelation Revolution ’69 (1968) bore what appeared to be a picture of Tarzan and Jane — or maybe it was Adam and Eve — on the cover, along with the uninspiring line “Featuring Joe Butler.” With the drummer now fronting the group and material supplied mainly by outside hired guns, the LP failed to chart after two singles flopped, and the band called it a day in 1969.
Sebastian’s solo career peaked with his No. 1 single “Welcome Back” — the theme song to the TV sitcom Welcome Back Kotter, which launched John Travolta’s career — in 1976. After a couple of fitful solo projects, Yanovsky became a restauranteur in Kingston, Ontario, Canada; he succumbed to a heart attack on Dec. 13, 2002 at the age of 57. Never saying die, Butler, Boone, and Yester regrouped The Lovin’ Spoonful in 1991 for an ongoing series of tours and two live albums.
The Lovin’ Spoonful was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000.
