Fortuitously #4

 

John Sebastian has been very much on my mind. And the way things work the more I have found myself thinking about and listening to John Sebastian the more I have come across his presence. So, for example, I recently stumbled upon footage from the Summer of 1984 of John onstage in New Jersey with REM performing ‘Do You Believe In Magic?’, complete with autoharp. The smiles on Michael Stipe and Mike Mills’ faces you just would not be able to wipe off, no matter how hard you tried. This was so astonishingly wonderful that I got into quite a frenzy, which was a bit daft as I was meant to be sitting quietly before heading round to the local GP surgery to have a blood pressure check-up. Needless to say, the reading was not good, and the nurse suggested I was feeling anxious. Ha! I was tempted to explain, but how the hell do you tell a stranger about …?

It is primarily a series of LPs John Sebastian made in the 1970s that I have been preoccupied with of late. This was prompted by falling in love with Salena Jones singing John’s ‘Baby Don’t Ya Get Crazy’ which I came across on a wonderful 3CD RPM set I picked up for next-to-nothing called Right Back Where We Started From: Female Pop and Soul in Seventies Britain and which is packed with some real gems, mostly new to me. But, for me, Salena steals the show with a real soul blast of a rendition. Salena, incidentally, I associate with brightening up early evening TV light entertainment variety shows in the early 1970s. Indeed, you can find a great clip from a 1972 edition of The Two Ronnies where Salena sings ‘More Today Than Yesterday’. And some of the recordings she made in the UK with Keith Mansfield are highly rated, like their 1973 cover of ‘Am I The Same Girl? (Soulful Strut)’.

Anyway, it’s rather odd that I wasn’t overly familiar with John Sebastian’s 1970s recordings. And it’s still a mystery to me why I haven’t spent more time with these LPs. It may be something to do with loving the old Spoonful songs so much and feeling afraid of messing with that ideal or idyll. You know, all those melodic hugs that are Lovin’ Spoonful hums: ‘Rain on the Roof’, ‘Coconut Grove’, ‘Full Measure’, ‘Darling Be Home Soon’, ‘Didn’t Want to Have To Do It’, and so on. Maybe I was just a little bit scared of spoiling all that. I don’t know.

Oddly at the time John Sebastian was sharing a stage with REM I would have been putting together a fanzine which strongly reflected my obsession with the Lovin’ Spoonful and ‘Do You Believe In Magic?’ in particular. I felt a little bit bad about this as my peers were writing about bands like the Three Johns, Membranes and so on. Then I saw a quote from Jonathan Richman, who was interviewed by Jane Matthews for the October 1984 edition of Zigzag, where he said: “I saw the Lovin’ Spoonful when I was a little kid, I heard ‘Do You Believe In Magic?’ on the radio, and all I know is it changed me. I don’t know about for the better, it just made me more alive.” That at the time felt like a complete vindication.

Coincidentally or not, I recently came across a clip of Jonathan filmed backstage at the FYF Fest in 2017 where he chooses ‘Do You Believe In Magic?’ as his prescription for the world, which is perfect and rather wonderfully echoes John’s own ‘Jug Band Music’. Jonathan goes on to say he saw the Lovin’ Spoonful when they came to Boston in March 1966 and that this was the first big rock ’n’ roll show he ever saw: “And it might have been the best.”

Also recently I was lucky enough to pick up an Edsel 2CD set collecting together John Sebastian’s four studio LPs from the 1970s, and I have to say it is a total joy. Oh, I know it’s all about individual taste, and I am not going to pretend everything on these albums is great, but then again, those old Lovin’ Spoonful LPs would have me skipping certain songs, and the same is true of my cherished Dylan, The Clash, Van Morrison, whatever records, and no doubt whoever you support. The thing is that for me no one can match John Sebastian’s air of tenderness, the gentleness, the warm humanity which is at the heart of his words and melodies. And on these albums, he manages to avoid the perils and pitfalls of 1970s singer / songwriter indulgence and production values, even with lots of famous friends, thankfully unobtrusively, helping out. So, I think they are pretty special.

The first in this series is John B. Sebastian which came out right at the start of the 1970s, though it was recorded some time before that. It is the only one of his solo LPs where all the songs are by John. I think it is wonderful, but I sense it didn’t set the world on fire. In his Rolling Stone review Greil Marcus was not at all sure about it. He praises ‘What She Thinks About’ as “a crashing, explosive rock and roll song” which stands out but describes the exquisite ‘Magical Connection’ as being “a Sergio Mendes bore with vibes, that simply doesn’t make it at all”. What can you say? Different strokes for different folks. I adore ‘Magical Connection’. It is such a gorgeous song. And have you heard the sublime 1971 Sarah Vaughan version on Mainstream?

Maybe it’s to do with the fantastic Salena Jones version kickstarting all this, but my favourite track on John B. Sebastian is ‘Baby Don’t Ya Get Crazy’ complete with backing vocals by the Ikettes. Somehow this goes back to Jonathan Richman talking about when he first heard ‘Do You Believe In Magic?’ and thought it must have been by a black Motown group like The Temptations. Actually, it does seem strange that there aren’t a whole load of other soul recordings of this track. One song on this LP that certainly has been recorded by others is the haunting ‘The Room That Nobody Lives In’ which I know has been sung by Mama Cass and by Elvis Costello. And I have recently discovered, via The Numero Group, an eerily enchanting version by Joan Brooks about whom I know absolutely nothing.

Speaking of cover versions, across these four John Sebastian LPs he performs songs associated with Josh White, Clifton Chenier, Jimmy Cliff, Little Feat, Guy Mitchell, and the Carter Family, which is a glorious old mix isn’t it? There are also a handful of visits to the Spoonful’s back pages. I am particularly fascinated by the title track of Four of Us from 1971, which is a four-part 16-minute suite celebrating a honeymoon field trip with a sweet line about visiting “the singing dolphin man” complete with a wonderful Fred Neil imitation when John sings about eating “pancakes from a frying pan”. On the ‘Domenica’ part the Esso Trinidad Steel Band appears, fresh from collaborating with Van Dyke Parks, and Dr John is on the ‘Lashes LaRue’ New Orleans sequence. It’s quite something, but I really do not recall anyone ever recommending it to me or asking whether I’d heard it.

The Illustrated New Musical Express Encyclopaedia of Rock compiled by Nick Logan (who a little later started The Face) and Bob Woffinden came out 1976-ish, though it was several years later that my mum bought a copy for me in a charity shop. In the pre-Internet age this was invaluable for decoding the pre-punk musical activity, and I am sure I recall the cover of John Sebastian’s 1974 LP Tarzana Kid from there. There are only a few new songs on that one, but it is a lovely listen.

And then there’s Welcome Back from 1976 where on the cover John looks wonderfully a little like Stan Bowles with the hair and those mutton chop sideburns. Wouldn’t it be great if Stan was a fan? I gather the LP came about quickly following the unexpected success of the title track which was the theme tune for the TV series Welcome Back, Kotter. The single, and some days now it’s my favourite John Sebastian song, got to number one in the States but got nowhere in the UK as far as I remember, which is odd as it would definitely fit with hits by Andrew Gold, Gallagher & Lyle, Sutherland Brothers and Quiver, the sort of stuff I had a soft spot for at the time when it was played on Radio 2 in the daytime. I don’t recall the TV show either, so was unaware of John Travolta from this series though we would soon see an awful lot of him. The LP closes with a gorgeous harmonica-led near-instrumental where the sole line comes at the end: “Let This Be Our Time To Get Along”. Right on!

That Edsel 2CD set comes with a bonus DVD of an intimate solo set at the BBC in October 1970. They’ve shown clips from this on various BBC4 shows, but seeing the whole thing is a total delight. John is so goofily affable, self-deprecating, and endearing, standing there in his tie-dye suit. Some of the chat between songs is really funny, and there are echoes of Jonathan Richman when he’s talking about his beloved $20 Sears & Roebuck amp. Also, all the mentions of his Cheapo-Cheapo productions makes me think of the old record shop with that name on Rupert Street in Soho. Actually, John talks about record shopping in London and how it was mad that you could find funky old blues LPs more easily than in New York. A highlight for me is John’s joy when someone requests ‘Rain on the Roof’ and I fell in love with the young lady in the white polo-neck sweater sitting right at the front, blissfully happy, who knew the words to all the old songs. I hope life has been kind to her over the 55 years since that show.

Another place John Sebastian has appeared recently for me is in the inspirational Richard Barone book Music + Revolution: Greenwich Village in the 1960s in which he is one of the heroes of the story of the era’s folk music scene. The book came out in late 2022 but typically I had no idea it existed until recently. I was intrigued as I knew Barone was once in The Bongos (and may still be) and I had most recently come across him as part of the excellent The Feelies-play-the-Velvets concept event in 2017 singing and playing guitar on ‘Oh Sweet Nuthin’’. There was a New Jersey connection: The Bongos being from Hoboken while the Feelies were based in Haledon.

The Bongos, for me, were one of those bands back in the early 1980s whose name I was aware of but didn’t get to hear until many years down the line. I do recall Paul Morley warmly praising their cover of T. Rex’s ‘Mambo Sun’ (don’t ask me why that stayed in my mind) which was among the Bongos recordings released on the very cool Fetish label. The Bongos’ Fetish output includes their 1981 mini-LP Time and the River which rather wonderfully features contributions from labelmates Charlie Collins of Clock DVA and Cosey Fanni Tuti.

The Bongos’ Fetish releases were collected on the Drums Along The Hudson set for their fans in the States, and an excellent Cooking Vinyl CD expanded edition of this is now available. It’s interesting that the group, perhaps understandably, were linked to New Jersey peers like The Feelies and The dBs, but with their high-octane Rickenbacker-fuelled melodic noise and frantic live shows one suspects they would have found favour with the more forward-thinking or open-minded mods.

Richard Barone’s Music + Revolution book has its roots in Sorrows and Promises, a 2016 record he made celebrating the songs that came out of Greenwich Village in the 1960s. It’s a great LP and is sort of distantly related to that Rainy Day one from way back. There are some lovely cameo appearances from John Sebastian and Dion among others, and there’s a beautiful sequence that takes in ‘Don’t Make Promises’, ‘I’ll Keep It With Mine’, ‘Sunday Morning’, and Phil Ochs’ ‘When I’m Gone’. That song of Phil’s is so beautiful, and oddly whenever it is on my mind it seems to mutate into Jim Croce’s ‘I’ll Have To Say I Love You In A Song’. Don’t ask me to explain that one!

Richard’s cover of Tim Hardin’s ‘Don’t Make Promises’ features the great David Amram on woodwind. David is one of the stars of Richard’s book, where he is described as “the eternal beatnik” providing a link to Jack Kerouac and a slightly earlier sphere of activity in the Village. Coincidentally or not, I very recently heard David singing ‘When I’m Gone’ on a record he released last year in his mid-nineties, David Amram Honors Guthrie and Ochs - Old Souls. Fans of Mose Allison and Hoagy Carmichael will adore David’s performances and arrangements on this lovely short set.

Fellow addicts of connectivity will appreciate or remember that in early 2024 I found a then-recent clip of David Amram with David Johansen, performing an astonishingly moving version of Phil Ochs’ ‘There But For Fortune’, which seems even more poignant now as the former New York Dolls frontman died in 2025 and was, I strongly suspect, very ill at the time of the performance. This took place at a Music & Revolution celebration at Carnegie Hall. At that time, I was completely unaware of the connection to Richard Barone.

I don’t usually like factual books where the author plants himself within the text, but somehow with Barone it works. His approach, for some reason, makes me think of Laurent Binet’s HHhH in the way he includes his research activities and life experiences. So, for example, he shares how the seeds of the project were planted by Tiny Tim whom Barone encountered as a kid growing up in Florida, where he would listen enchanted to Tim’s tales of his life and time in Greenwich Village during the 1960s.

One of the strengths of the book is the way it is a celebration of cultural, racial and sexual diversity. I also like the fact that Barone is an unashamed romantic, and I think this passage is pivotal: “I wasn’t there, but in my mind’s eye, I picture the Greenwich Village of 1960 in black-and-white. The brick buildings, the sidewalks, the cobblestone streets—all monochromatic. I imagine MacDougal Street at night resembling a Polaroid picture in motion: stark, grainy, high-contrast, like a scene in a film noir movie, filled with reflections and long shadows and the muted echoes of finger-style acoustic guitar picking as its soundtrack.”

He goes on to add: “The truth is, of course, not so black-and-white. Then as now, the Village was messy, more than a bit cacophonous, vivid with color, with garish neon and painted signs on glass storefronts. There were smells—beer, cappuccino, occasional whiffs of marijuana. And there were characters, with personalities just as colorful as the streets and storefronts. And some were just as smelly. Then as now, against the backdrop of old buildings was a beautiful, young population of inhabitants and frequenters who gathered in coffeehouses, cramped apartments, bars, the streets, and Washington Square Park. For them, the Village was novel in its own antiquity; far from the freshly mowed suburbias many had left behind—an escape from predictability and modern mediocrity.”

I am not sure if in the end I was amused or appalled by Barone’s repeated namedropping. The guy is certainly well-connected. I particularly liked a passage centred on his friend Donovan who, albeit an outsider, “was a keen observer of the scene and a favorite songwriter among many who performed here. He gave me invaluable advice, reminding me, ‘Ricardo, write about the ones nobody has ever heard of. That’s where the story is.’ He was right, and it became my desire to illuminate those who are lesser known but no less interesting.”

So, in Barone’s tale, which takes us roughly from the Beatnik Riots of 1961 to the Stonewall Riots of 1969, from the old school of Dave Van Ronk, Terri Thal, Paul Clayton through the likes of Eric Andersen, Karen Dalton and Len Chandler to the film maker Barbara Rubin and the Velvets, there are plenty of unexpected twists and turns. I particularly like how right at the start he draws Buddy Holly into the story, focusing on his time living in Greenwich Village and how he became immersed in the emerging folk milieu there, with links to Carolyn Hester and Fred Neil, and implicitly speculating on what might have been if that plane had safely finished its journey. Richard’s own Sorrows and Promises record starts with a lovely version of ‘Learning The Game’ which dates from Buddy’s time on the scene.

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I learned from Barone’s book as he tells the tale of how things changed from the days of passing the basket in coffee houses through to the advent of a new wave of performers such as Janis Ian, José Feliciano and Jesse Colin Young, and the end of an era or a “loss of innocence” in 1968 with the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the Vietnam War, and the Democrat Convention in Chicago. There were numerous times when I stopped to think: “Did I know that?” One example being that David Crosby had performed in a folk duo with Terry Callier, and it was Terry who introduced him to Jim McGuinn one night at the Bitter End on Bleecker Street.

Speaking of which, I wonder if Richard Barone was there at that REM event on 9 June 1984, at the Capitol Theatre, Passaic, when they shared the stage with Roger McGuinn to perform ‘So You Wanna Be A Rock & Roll Star’ and then with John Sebastian to do ‘Do You Believe In Magic?’ right at the end of the show. It certainly seems Richard had connections to REM early on, and I know he joined them onstage for an encore at Maxwell’s in Hoboken very early in 1982. So, you never know. It must have been quite a night, and it is just as well I wasn’t aware of it at the time or I would have probably gone on and on about the perfect symbolism of the whole thing.

It seems the show was hosted by MTV and the idea was to celebrate the folk-rock roots of REM. So, as well as the group itself, very much at the peak of their game, there was an all-star line-up and there seems to be video footage of Jesse Colin Young, John Sebastian and Richie Havens being joined onstage by Rick Danko, Richard Manuel, and Levon Holm from The Band to do ‘The Shape I’m In’ and ‘Rag Mama Rag’, then Roger McGuinn with his Rickenbacker comes on for ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ and ‘Eight Miles High’, followed by John Sebastian singing  ‘Did You Ever Have To Make Up Your Mind?’ (coincidentally or not, this is the song Richard Barone does on his Sorrows and Promises set with John on harmonica, and at the live launch David Amram delivered the immortal “You better go home son …” line!). Finally, Jesse Colin Young leads the ensemble in a cover of Dino Valenti’s ‘Get Together’ which only recently Bonnie Dobson performed so magnificently with the Hanging Stars.

Just over a month before that New Jersey show I was fortunate enough to see REM at The Marquee where they covered ‘So You Wanna Be A Rock & Roll Star’. I wonder if they knew then that, in a matter of weeks, they’d be performing it onstage with Roger McGuinn? Coincidentally or not, I almost saw Roger McGuinn in late July that year but was thwarted by the incredibly annoying habit that Dingwalls in Camden Town had for putting headliners on ridiculously late, or rather too late to catch the last train back to Suburbia. So, all we saw was, I believe, the Peace Seekers with Gene Parsons doing a right old country rock set.

Ironically, someone has posted on YouTube audio from a Roger McGuinn performance at Dingwalls, perhaps the one I missed, and it is incredibly good. I am not sure if that makes me feel better or worse. The first half of the set is solo McGuinn then for the second half he is joined by the Peace Seekers for an electric run through some of the Byrds’ classics. Oh boy! And judging by the clip of him with REM he wasn’t only sounding great, he looked good too. We were such snobs back then, and those old 1960s stars seemed like dinosaurs somehow, but he was only in his early forties.

At that stage I think I had only got as far as Sweetheart of the Rodeo which I had in a double LP gatefold sleeve paired with Notorious Byrd Brothers, though I recall that genial Joe Foster would say we should check out the Flying Burrito Bros. Interestingly, in that old issue of Zigzag from 1984 Mark Perry mentioned being a Gram Parsons fan. I should mention, and probably have many times before, that I did at least know and love ‘Chestnut Mare’ as I got it on one of those Old Gold 45s you could buy in branches of W.H. Smith just because in Sounds Dave McCullough mentioned Hurrah! performed songs that were like mini ‘Chestnut Mare’ orgasms, or something similar.

So, yeah, back in 1984 I was much more of a The Byrds’ Original Singles 1965 – 1967 kind of guy and would play that to death alongside my brother’s Lovin’ Spoonful double LP which was part of the Pye File Series that came out in the late 1970s. He also had ones by The Kinks and Donovan. At the start of his liner notes for the Lovin’ Spoonful set John Tobler makes the case for ‘Do You Believe In Magic?’ and The Showmen’s ‘It Will Stand’ being the definitive r’n’r anthems. Perhaps not coincidentally there is a page in the 1981 Postcard Records Brochure where Alan Horne includes the lyrics for both those songs. He opts for the words to the Jonathan Richman version of ‘It Will Stand’, a b-side to one of the editions of ‘Roadrunner’. The Showmen’s original I would hear first via the early Kent LP On The Soul Side which was, for me, life changing.

My big brother hated me borrowing his records, as he was a real audio buff and I only had an old, battered Ferguson mono contraption which I loved dearly. So, I had to sneakily play that Lovin’ Spoonful set when he was out or away at college. Another record of his I would surreptitiously borrow was his copy of All The News That’s Fit To Sing by Phil Ochs who is very much one of the heroes of Richard Barone’s lovely book. In fact, I learned from it that John Sebastian played harmonica on Phil’s cover of Woody’s ‘Bound For Glory’ on that LP. And indeed, if you look at photos of John Sebastian from that time, he looks rather like he is basing his look on Phil. I bet they had some lovely chats about Buddy Holly.

When I found out about all that I thought I must tell my brother the next time I see him, before remembering he is no longer with us. The last time I saw my brother alive we were talking about that debut Phil Ochs LP and how he’d bought it out of curiosity as he’d read something about him in one of the left-wing publications he would buy. My brother, incidentally, had the most haphazard record collection you could imagine, and not necessarily in a good way.

Anyway, on the morning of my brother’s funeral, at the end of last Summer, sitting in a cheap hotel room, idly flicking through TV channels, something that would never happen at home, I chanced across a clip of the Lovin’ Spoonful doing ‘Do You Believe In Magic?’ which I had never seen before. It was from the TV show Hullabaloo and John was there with his autoharp and his stripey t-shirt and silly grin, and it was very much like Jonathan Richman said. Suddenly I bucked up and thought: “Yeah, I can do this. I can cope with this dreadful day.” I got myself out of there and went to get a cab to the crematorium, only to find myself stuck in a horrendous traffic jam. So, I bailed out and ran along a dual carriageway with my overnight bag for the final mile in a howling gale. Not a pretty sight, but I got there in time. In fact, I was early. He was late. Futures and pasts.