1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music (23 page)

Yanovsky and Butler had an eight-by-ten room in the grubby Albert Hotel, and the assistant manager agreed to let them rehearse in the basement, where the ceiling was caving in. Butler said, “It inspired us, because it made us frightened of poverty.”
20

They gigged at the Night Owl Café, which was so small the drums didn’t fit onstage and had to be on the floor in front of the rest of the band. Sebastian recalled,

We were playing pretty steadily for the local people from Greenwich Village who were part of the jazz scene or part of the kind of downtown “in crowd.” They were “finger poppers,” guys who played chess, “beatniks.” But there was this one particular night as we were playing, I looked out in the audience and saw this beautiful 16-year-old girl just dancing the night away. And I remember Zal and I just elbowed each other the entire night, because to us, that young girl symbolized the fact that our audience was changing, that maybe they had finally found us. I wrote “Do You Believe in Magic” the next day.
21

Spector was interested, but the band didn’t want to be dominated by Spector. Instead, they signed with the Kama Sutra record label and released “Magic” on July 20. (It was a good week for music: “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Help!,” and “Eve of Destruction” all came out within the same day or two.) Featuring Sebastian playing his signature autoharp, “Do You Believe in Magic,” a celebration of young girls’ souls and rock and roll setting you free, made it to No. 9, its euphoria serving as an innocent bookend to “Satisfaction.” Now that the Beatles had moved on to melancholy singles, it was the Spoonful who bottled the exhilaration of going into the city to find girls to dance with all night. Two weeks before Dylan’s metaphoric stoning at the Newport Folk Festival, the Spoonful exhorted the listener not to waste time choosing between jug band music or rhythm and blues: just get happy and blow your mind. “Magic” also used the word
groovy
, which had been around since the 1920s but was now beginning to gain critical mass with songs such as the Mindbenders’ “A Groovy Kind of Love” and Simon and Garfunkel’s alternatively spelled “We’ve Got a Groovey Thing Goin’.”

On the Lovin’ Spoonful’s first album,
Do You Believe in Magic
, Sebastian continued to be haunted by the (not legal) girl who had inspired him with her dancing. Perhaps he was warning himself of the consequences of statutory rape when he refitted the guitar of “Prison Wall Blues,” by Gus Cannon’s Jug Stompers, for the gentle “Younger Girl,” in which he moans that it is killing him to have to wait a few more years. Still, he was quickly distracted in their next single, “Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind.” Yanovsky’s guitar wryly commiserates as a father of two girls tells Sebastian he has to go home and pick which daughter he wants. The song went to No. 2. The wailing “Night Owl Blues” let Sebastian show his chops as the son of a harp blower.

With “Daydream,” Sebastian tried to rewrite the Supremes’ “Baby Love” as a jug band song and wound up with another No. 2 hit on both sides of the Atlantic. The song inspired the Beatles and the Kinks to begin following their own music hall leanings with “Good Day Sunshine” and “Sunny Afternoon,” respectively.

The band recorded the
Daydream
album from August to December. Boone cowrote (with Sebastian) two of the album’s greatest tracks, “You Didn’t Have to Be So Nice” and “Butchie’s Tune.” The disconsolate country guitar of “Butchie’s Tune” sets the mood as the singer slips out on his woman for good, in the early dawn, before she wakes up. “Didn’t Want to Have to Do It” is another sad ballad about breaking someone’s heart. “It’s Not Time” marries Bakersfield twang with wise lyrics about trying to be mature enough not to argue.

Brian Wilson later said that it was the Spoonful’s “You Didn’t Have to Be So Nice” that inspired him to write “God Only Knows,” the centerpiece of
Pet Sounds
.
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With its chiming guitar and warm humming vocals, “You Didn’t Have to Be So Nice” made the Top 10 like all the Lovin’ Spoonful’s first seven singles. Woody Allen enlisted them for the soundtrack to
What’s Up Tiger Lily?
, and Francis Ford Coppola grabbed them for
You’re a Big Boy Now.
And soon John Lennon would even adopt Sebastian’s circular wire-frame glasses, as distinctive as McGuinn’s rectangular shades, for his own look.

The producers who created
The Monkees
TV show first considered hiring the Spoonful because they were playful clowns like the Beatles used to be, singing about old-time movies with their arms around one another, unconcerned with posing arrogantly aloof like the Stones or the Byrds. But the Spoonful didn’t need a TV show; almost overnight they had catapulted into the big leagues, respected as formidable writers and performers.

Two members of their old band the Mugwumps, Mama Cass and Denny Doherty, were about to join them there.

14

Soulsville and the Godfather Challenge Hitsville to Get Raw

The Four Tops’ “I Can’t Help Myself” makes it to No. 1 twice, in June and July, and the Supremes debut at the Copacabana on July 29. At Stax Records, Wilson Pickett tops the R&B charts with the new beat of “In the Midnight Hour” on August 7, and Otis Redding releases “Respect” on August 15. That same week, James Brown tops the R&B charts with “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” inventing funk.

Aside from their work
with the Supremes, the writer-producer team of Holland-Dozier-Holland also transformed the Four Tops into a band that rivaled the Temptations for the position of Motown’s most successful male group. The Tops started on Chess Records in 1956 and later moved to Columbia, but it wasn’t until they joined Motown and HDH gave them “Baby I Need Your Loving,” in 1964, that they made the Top 20. Then HDH retooled the Supremes’ “Where Did Our Love Go” into “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)” for the Tops, and the song went to No. 1 on June 19. After being interrupted for a week by “Mr. Tambourine Man,” it returned to the top spot on July 3.

For the sequel, Dozier reversed the chords, and within twenty-four hours the team recorded, pressed, and distributed “It’s the Same Old Song.” It made No. 5 on the pop charts. The exercise epitomized their determination to suck every last drop of juice from a hit. But at the same time, the new lyrics were substantial: about how songs heard when we’re in love return to haunt us after a breakup. “This Old Heart of Mine” recycles the melody again and mixes it with the bridge of the Supremes’ “Back in My Arms Again.” Realizing they would be pushing it to give it to the Tops, HDH gave the track to the Isley Brothers, and somehow “Heart” turned out the best of all (though it may just seem that way because it hasn’t been as overplayed).

Frantically cranking out hits for the Tops, the Supremes, and Martha and the Vandellas, HDH didn’t even cut demos. Dozier said, “I’d come up with an idea, Brian and I would finish it off and then run downstairs and cut the track with the band. A lot of times we didn’t even have a title. Then we’d bring it back up and Eddie and I would sit there and bounce things around and (ask) what is this track saying?”
1

Unfortunately July 16’s “Nothing but Heartaches,” released a week after “It’s the Same Old Song,” was a little too much of a retread and made it only to No. 11, ending the Supremes’ streak of No. 1’s after five. An irate Gordy quickly issued a memo: “We will release nothing less than top ten product on any artist; and because the Supremes’ world-wide acceptance is greater than the other artists, on them we will only release number-one records.”

Gordy was particularly irked because his plan to have the Supremes cross over into the supper clubs was finally coming to fruition: they debuted at the Copacabana on July 29. The club was owned by the Mob and featured a Brazilian theme with Copacabana Girls and, incongruously, Chinese food on the menu. To prepare, Gordy hired a charm school teacher to give the singers etiquette lessons, along with a fashion expert, makeup artist, and choreographer. All three Supremes had grown up in Detroit’s Brewster-Douglass housing projects, and Ross said, “I think what stands out in my mind most about the Copa is the feeling of respect that we’ll never forget from those audiences.”
2
By playing the Copa, the Supremes paved the way for the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, and Martha and the Vandellas to play there as well, and once you played the Copa, you could play anywhere in the world. Soon Gordy would make the Artists Personal Development Department, a.k.a. the Motown Finishing School, a division of his empire.

The Copa was a turning point for Florence Ballard, who had been frustrated with her diminishing role in the trio. Barbra Streisand’s “People” was Ballard’s showstopper in the Supremes’ set, but a few days after their Copa debut, Ross was assigned the song for good. Mary Wilson wrote in her memoir, “From that moment on, Flo regarded what was in fact the highest achievement of our career as a disaster. She was sad and moody, and I could see the three of us being torn apart.”
3

Ballard was the one in the group who had initially been discovered, singing on her porch, by the manager of a doo-wop group called the Primes (later renamed the Temptations). He asked her if she had any friends who could also sing, and she brought in Wilson, who brought in Ross. Originally, they each took turns singing lead. But though Ballard had the stronger, more traditional R&B voice, Ross’s higher-pitched, breathy vocals turned out to be ideally suited for the era’s technology. Marvin Gaye said, “Motown understood the transistor radio. Back then, transistors were selling like hot cakes and Motown songs were mixed to sound good on transistors and car radios. Diana’s voice was the perfect instrument to cut through those sound waves.”
4

As Gordy increasingly focused on Ross, Ballard protested the group’s shift away from R&B and toward “whiter” pop—to little avail. When the band’s success brought the singers the luxury of separate hotel rooms, she felt increasingly isolated. She turned to drink, gaining weight and missing performances.

She was haunted by a tragic event that happened shortly before signing with Motown. When she was sixteen, she had attended a sock hop with her brother but had gotten separated from him, so accepted a ride home from a boy she knew, future Detroit Pistons basketball player Reginald Harding.
5
He drove her to a darkened street and raped her at knifepoint. Following the assault, she stayed inside her house for weeks before confiding in Wilson and Ross. They were supportive, but no one back then knew how to deal with rape trauma syndrome. Wilson wrote, “Diane and I never discussed it again, not even between ourselves. I chalk that up to our youth.”
6

As for the Supreme caught in the middle, Wilson would later write that Ross was a diva and not very nice. She writes in her memoir that when she entreated Gordy to let her handle a lead, he said, “Oh, Mary. You know you can’t sing!”
7
He said it jokingly, but it destroyed her confidence.

Despite the backstage tension, the trio was second only to the Beatles on the charts throughout the decade, with twelve No. 1 U.S. singles to the Beatles’ twenty. Elvis had seventeen, but that included his work in the 1950s. The Supremes were Gordy’s main weapon in ending the era when a black single could rise only so high on the pop charts before a white performer appropriated it and had a bigger hit with it. Today, aside from the Beatles, Elvis, and Madonna, none of the artists with the most No. 1 hits is white—Mariah Carey (eighteen), Michael Jackson (thirteen), Whitney Houston (eleven), Janet Jackson (ten), and Stevie Wonder (ten). (And, of course, Michael Jackson and Wonder got their start at Motown.)

*   *   *

For soul purists, Stax Records,
in Memphis, was considered more authentic than Motown because its shouters’ vocals were grittier, its house band’s guitars were more distorted, and it used bluesy horns and organs more than strings. For the best illustration of the difference, listen to the original “My Girl,” by the Temptations (Motown), backed by the Funk Brothers and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and then Otis Redding’s version (Stax), backed by Booker T. and the M.G.s, the Memphis Horns, and pianist Isaac Hayes.

The funny thing was, while people called Stax “blacker,” it was owned by a white brother and sister, and its house band, Booker T. and the M.G.s, was integrated. Jim Stewart was a white banker who played country fiddle until being inspired, by the local success of Sam Phillips’s Sun Records, to start his own label. His sister, Estelle Axton, who worked at a different bank, mortgaged her house to buy the one-track Ampex tape recorder for the bands to record on.
8
They couldn’t overdub as Motown did, which gave Stax an earthier sound for its first six years, though in June the studio finally had a four-track installed. The label’s moniker came from the siblings’ names: “Stewart” plus “Axton.”

They had their studio built in an old Memphis movie theater in the black ghetto, on 926 E. McLemore Avenue. (As an answer to the “Hitsville U.S.A” sign on the Motown house, they put “Soulsville U.S.A.” on the theater marquee.) The slope of the original theater floor gave the room unique acoustics.
9
They transformed the theater’s candy shop into the Satellite Record Shop—Satellite was the original name of their label. In their own version of Motown’s quality-control tests, as soon as they recorded a song in the studio, Jim and Estelle would play the track in the record store, to check consumer reaction. If it was bad, they might rework it or drop it. Having a record store on site also let them keep close tabs on what was hot. Jerry Wexler, at Atlantic Records (the inventor of the term
R&B
for
Billboard
and the producer of both Ray Charles and the Drifters), arranged a deal for Atlantic to distribute Stax’s records nationally.

Booker T. and the M.G.s played on almost all the Stax cuts by Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Sam and Dave, and Carla and Rufus Thomas. The band included two black guys, Booker T. Jones on organ and Al Jackson on drums, and two white guys, Steve Cropper on guitar and Donald “Duck” Dunn on bass (replacing Lewie Steinberg). Unlike Motown’s Funk Brothers, Booker T. and the M.G.s had a No. 3 hit in their own name with “Green Onions.” Cropper went for a dirtier guitar sound than other session axe men, while Jackson hit the skins as hard as Zeppelin’s drummer John Bonham on tracks such as “In the Midnight Hour.” The Memphis Horns filled out the sessions. Isaac Hayes often sat in when Booker T. was away studying music at Indiana University. Hayes would go on to stardom with the Oscar-winning “Shaft” in 1971.