Vinyl Relics: Underground by The Electric Prunes
Vinyl Relics: Underground by The Electric Prunes
You hear these kinds of stories and think, “What are the odds?”, or “No way that could ever happen today”. But it’s true.
Electric Prunes band leader James Lowe described the day he and his band – then called Jim & The Lords- were jamming away in his parents’ garage, just like they had for the last couple of years. It was no different from any other jam session except this time, it so happened that a local realtor brought her friend along to a neighbor’s house as she was prepping to sell. They heard a ruckus from the garage, and the friend took it upon herself to knock on the door and ask if she could listen in. She listened to three or four songs and told the band she knew a producer looking for bands. That producer was none other than David Hassinger, who would later work with Frank Sinatra, the Grateful Dead, CSNY, Jefferson Airplane, The Monkees, The Seeds, and Elvis– to name a few. He also owned and operated The Sound Factory, one of Hollywood’s most in-demand recording studios of its day. When he met Jim & The Lords, he was working with The Rolling Stones. James said, “She told us she knew this guy named David Hassinger and that she could introduce us. We didn’t believe her of course, but it turned out to be true”.
Within weeks, Jim & The Lords went from jamming in their garage to meeting an up-and-coming producer and landing a recording contract for their first single.
There was one order of business to attend to: finding a new name. Over the course of a weekend, they bounced around several ideas until one of the band members told the joke: “What’s purple and goes ‘buzz, buzz, buzz?’…an electric prune”. And that was it, that was their new name. James told me “David HATED it. He said, “You can’t call yourselves that”, but we said, ‘That’s our new name’. Then he met with Warner Brothers and said, “You know what? They loved it! But I had to tell them I came up with it’. So, he went from hating it to authorship in one day!”.
The Electric Prunes released their first single “Ain’t It Hard” in May 1966. It didn’t sell many copies. “I think my mom bought one”, James said. But it was good enough to warrant a second single, and what a single it turned out to be! “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)” was released a few months later in November 1966 and started climbing up the charts. With its feedback opening, starts and stops, hard garage rock feel, and psychedelic guitar sounds, it epitomizes everything great about American mid-sixties rock ‘n’ roll. So much so that Lenny Kaye chose it to be the opening cut on his seminal compilation album Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968.
“Too Much to Dream” catapulted the band into the spotlight. Suddenly they were on tour throughout the country and made several appearances on American Bandstand and other shows. There’s even a famous wah-wah pedal commercial that features the band.
With a hit on their hands, the label rushed the band back into the studio and, three months later, The Electric Prunes’ first album hit the record store racks. The self-titled album featured twelve tracks, a combination of covers and originals. It sold well on the strength of the hit and their follow-up single, “Get Me to the World on Time”.
For their sophomore album, they had a little more time to work on the songs and flesh them out in the studio. “David was busy producing the Grateful Dead’s Anthem of the Sun, so we had more time to work on our own stuff”, James said.
Underground was released in August 1967. Though it didn’t have the monster hit on par with “Too Much to Dream”, it was a stronger album. There were a bunch of originals and a few covers that included a great take on a Goffin-King tune called “I Happen to Love You”. James said, “I couldn’t believe no one else had recorded that”.
There are a few highlights—one being the opening cut “The Great Banana Hoax”. James said he pushed for that to be the leadoff track, saying it was weird. “If we we’re gonna do something weird, I wanted it to be the first song, not buried somewhere”.
Underground didn’t sell quite as well as The Electric Prunes, but it did well enough to warrant a tour overseas. Their first show was in Stockholm, and it happened to be recorded. The tapes gathered dust for 30 years until they finally got an official release in the late ’90s. At the time, recording technology for live shows was not great, but in this case, the sound was very high quality. And the band was on fire, which helped. Stockholm ’67 is worth seeking out for any fans of the band, or anyone with an interest in 60’s psychedelic garage rock.
Photo by Lisa Lowe
After Underground, the band took a rather unusual turn. Producer/band manager David Hassinger had met David Axelrod, who had an idea: a Catholic mass set to rock music. All he needed was a band. Enter the Prunes. “I thought it was a unique idea”, Lowe said. “My mom liked it”.
Mass In F Minor was released in December 1967 to some mixed reviews. Not surprisingly, fans expecting more of the garage rock/psych mix they were known for were left scratching their heads.
Unhappy with the lack of creative control, James left the band. Hassinger brought in session players to release their next album, 1968’s Release of an Oath–another religion-inspired album. The band took one more crack at it by bringing in a young Kenny Loggins for their final album Just Good Ol’ Rock and Roll – billed as “The New and Improved Electric Prunes”. Unfortunately, the songs on this critically panned album were neither new or improved.
RELATED: Interview with James Lowe of The Electric Prunes
James went on to produce Sparks’ first two albums and a couple for Todd Rundgren, including his brilliant Something/Anything. If you’ve seen the great Sparks documentary, you can catch some commentary from James. “I love that band”, he told me.
Thirty years after their peak, the band reconvened for what would end up being a string of reunion albums. Typically, reunion albums can be a bit iffy but, in this case, each was reasonably well-received and had some great tunes.
Although The Electric Prunes are known primarily for their hit single, “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)”, there is more to the band than just that one classic song. The Electric Prunes and Underground each have that definitive American ’60s rock sound with the perfect blend of garage and psych. I give a slight nod to Underground since it has more original material and successfully tackles different styles.
In Epysode 35 of my audio podcast Vinyl Relics, I dive into each track of Underground and James provides some awesome commentary recalling stories of writing and recording the tracks. You can hear this, as well as a bunch of other epysodes by searching for “Vinyl Relics” on any podcast platform. There are new epysodes released every Thursday, each featuring various under-the-radar albums, which often include exclusive commentary from artists involved in the project.
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