What's the Connection? The Lovin' Spoonful, 10 CC and Pearl Jam

Lovin' Spoonful': Steve Boone, John Sebastian, Joe Butler, Zal Yanovsky

What do the bands The Lovin' Spoonful, 10 CC, and Pearl Jam have in common? Not that much. Certainly not their styles of music. But keep reading.

The Lovin' Spoonful was an American pop-rock band of the 1960s. They were named to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000.  Their biggest hits included "Do You Believe In Magic", "You Didn't Have to Be So Nice", "Daydream", "Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind." and "Younger Girl" 

Their only song to reach #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart was "Summer in the City" released in the summer of 1966.

their music

The band's name was inspired by some lines in a song by Mississippi John Hurt called "Coffee Blues." The Hurt song was generally considered to be either a drug reference to the spoon used to heat and melt heroin, or a reference to the amount of sperm ejaculated by the average male (about a spoonful). The band's leader, John Sebastian says it was the former, but the rumor of the latter persists.

10 cc Lol Creme, Kevin Godley, Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman

Which brings us to 10cc. They were an English art rock band that achieved their greatest commercial success in the early 1970s. Jonathan King, a flamboyant entrepreneur, producer, and recording artist, signed the band to his UK Records label in July 1972 and dubbed them 10cc. 

their music

King says that the name came from a dream in which he was standing in front of the Hammersmith Odeon in London where the marquee read "10cc The Best Band in the World." But the more popular origin story (confirmed in a 1988 interview and on a web page from original member Graham Gouldman) is that the band's name represented the volume of semen that was more than the average amount ejaculated by men, thereby making the band "more potent." The story is urban legend and the band origin even made it onto snopes.com which is where many search for the truth behind lies. 

Matt Cameron, Stone Gossard, Mike McCready, Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam, Jeff Ament

Pearl Jam is an American rock band that formed in Seattle, Washington, in 1990. Since its inception, the band's line-up has included Eddie Vedder (lead vocals, guitar), Jeff Ament (bass guitar), Stone Gossard (rhythm guitar), and Mike McCready (lead guitar). 

The band had called themselves "Mookie Blaylock" - a reference to the then-active All-Star basketball player - when they played their first official show in late 1990 and signed to Epic Records. Concerns about trademark issues meant a name change. They went with Pearl Jam.

In an early interview, Vedder said that the name "Pearl Jam" was a reference to his great-grandmother Pearl, who was married to a Native American and had a special recipe for peyote-laced jam. But in a 2006 Rolling Stone story, Vedder admitted that although he did have a great-grandma named Pearl, the story was a fiction. The band came up with "pearl" and then after attending a concert by Neil Young, they added jam because of Young's extended jam versions of his songs. In the PJ20 movie, it is said that band members came up with "Pearl" to signify something beautiful coming from something ugly.

Despite both of those origin tales (and a rumor that Mookie's nickname was Pearl Jam), the most popular band origin story is that "pearl jam" is another name for sperm. (see the Urban Dictionary)

their music

The success of their album Ten (as in 10cc?), led Pearl Jam to become a key part of the Seattle grunge scene along with Alice in Chains, Nirvana, and Soundgarden.

Lynyrd Skynyrd

 Lynyrd Skynyrd is an American rock band, formed in Jacksonville, Florida in the summer of 1964. A group of teenagers, Ronnie Van Zant, Allen Collins, and Gary Rossington, formed the band and called it "The Noble Five."

The band went through a number of name changes and some personnel changes and were known as "My Backyard" and "The Swampers."

The group won a local Battle of the Bands contest in 1968 and got the opening slot on several Southeast shows for the California-based psychedelic rock band Strawberry Alarm Clock.

In 1970, Van Zant wanted a new name for the band, and after trying out "One Percent" and "The Noble Five," they settled on "Leonard Skinnerd."

The name was taken from a physical-education teacher at Robert E. Lee High School named Leonard Skinner. Skinner was known for being harsh on boys with long hair. Before they released their first album, they changed the spelling to Lynyrd Skynyrd.

The band became prominent in 1973 with the hit song "Free Bird", which received national airplay, eventually reaching #19 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. It has become a rock and roll anthem today.

They achieved worldwide recognition before three members and one road crew member died in an airplane crash in 1977.

The band reformed in 1987 for a reunion tour with lead singer Ronnie Van Zant's younger brother Johnny as the front man. Lynyrd Skynyrd continues to tour and record. Of its original members, only Gary Rossington remained with the band as of 2010. 

The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006.

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Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin was an English rock band formed in London in 1968. They were known for their heavy, guitar-driven sound. They are often cited as one of the progenitors of hard rock and heavy metal, although their style drew from a variety of influences, including blues and folk music. 

Cover of their first album with an image of
probably the most famous zeppelin, the ill-fated Hindenberg.

When The Who’s drummer Keith Moon heard that London studio legends, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, were forming a new band with Robert Plant and John Bonham, he mockingly predicted that the project would go down “like a lead balloon.”The Who's bassist, John Entwistle, took it one step further, calling it a “lead zeppelin.” 

When those comments got to Jimmy Page and manager Peter Grant, they adopted the name. They had been considering calling the band The New Yardbirds. The Yardbirds was a popular 1960s British band that included a number of lineups during its time. When Eric Clapton left to join John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, he recommended Jimmy Page who was known as a prominent young session guitarist, to replace him. But Page was happy with his sessions work and recommended his friend Jeff Beck.

In 1966. Jimmy Page filled in on bass until rhythm guitarist Dreja could rehearse on the instrument and they toured with Page on bass, and Beck and Dreja on guitars. When Beck fell ill on tour, Page took over as lead guitarist and Dreja switched to bass. The Beck–Page lead guitar tandem created the avant-garde psychedelic rock single "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" which also has John Paul Jones on bass instead of Dreja.

The Yardbirds, 1966. From left: Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page,
Chris Dreja, Keith Relf and Jim McCarty    Link

After The Yardbirds disbanded, the first gigs by Page's new band included some Yardbirds' material such as "Train Kept a-Rollin'", "Dazed and Confused" and "For Your Love" and even some of Back's material such as "Shapes of Things." 

The Led Zeppelin spelling was done to push the correct pronunciation. 

Plant and Page performing in Chicago Stadium. 1977, during their last
North American tour          Photo: Jim Summaria, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Led Zeppelin is one of the best-selling music artists of all time; their total record sales are estimated to be between 200 to 300 million units worldwide. They achieved eight consecutive UK number-one albums and six number-one albums on the US Billboard 200, with five of their albums certified Diamond in the US. 

Rolling Stone magazine described them as "the heaviest band of all time", "the biggest band of the Seventies", and "unquestionably one of the most enduring bands in rock history". They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995; the museum's biography of the band states that they were "as influential" during the 1970s as the Beatles were during the 1960s.

 

The Left Banke

The Left Banke, 1965 in a photo from KRLA Beat, a newspaper published
for KRLA Radio in the mid-1960s., Public Domain, Link

The Left Banke was an American rock band formed in New York City in 1965. They are best known for their two songs "Walk Away Renée" and "Pretty Ballerina."

Due to keyboardist Michael Brown's classical background, they had a sound that was labeled by critics as "baroque rock," or "Bach rock." Not all their songs featured string arrangements and classical-sounding piano and harpsichord, but enough did that the labels stuck. Their vocal harmonies were reminiscent of the "British invasion" bands like the Beatles and the Zombies.

The original lineup was keyboards/composer Michael Brown, drummer/singer George Cameron, bass guitarist/singer Tom Finn, lead singer Steve Martin and drummer Warren David-Schierhorst. It was Brown's father, Harry Lookofsky, who got them into a recording studio. Harry was a well-known session violinist and ran a studio in New York. He ended up as their initial producer, manager and publisher.

"Left Bank" is the Anglicized version of the French Rive Gauche which is the southern bank of the river Seine in Paris. The river cuts the city into two parts and if you're looking downstream, the southern bank is to the left, and the northern bank (or Rive Droite) is to the right. The appeal to the band of the name Left Bank is its association with writers and artists, particularly after WWI. The area was known as the haunt of Colette, Djuna Barnes, Erik Satie, Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), Anaïs Nin, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Edith Wharton, Pablo Picasso, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, Henri Matisse, Jean-Paul Sartre, and the "Lost Generation" of American expatriates such as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and James Baldwin. The Left Bank became a phrase associated with bohemianism, counterculture, and creativity. The band added an "e" which is not French. (The French form of bank is banque.)

"Walk Away Renee" was a huge hit in late 1966 and their second single, "Pretty Ballerina", (both written by Brown) charted in early 1967. They appeared on The Left Banke album Walk Away Renee/Pretty Ballerina. Rolling Stone magazine put "Walk Away Renée" at number 220 in its list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time."

The band went through personnel issues and broke up, reformed, and recorded with other members.  The songs recorded by various incarnations of the group in 1967 and 1968 were assembled into a second LP, The Left Banke Too, which was released in November 1968.

The single from the second album that is most like the original "baroque" sound of the first two singles is "Desiree."

The band's story gets complicated at this point. Here's a capsule summary. The band continued playing live in 1969, but without Steve Martin. They disband but Brown and Martin reunite in the studio to record another single as The Left Banke, "Myrah" b/w "Pedestal." Brown, Cameron, Finn and Martin reunite to record two songs for the movie Hot Parts but due to legal issues with the name "Love Songs in the Night" and "Two by Two" are released as being by Steve Martin solo recordings.

There are a number of odd one-off recordings, some of which have been collected on other albums or passed along bootleg style. One of those came out of a 1971 recording session at Bell Records with Les Fradkind. "I Could Make It Last Forever" (not written by any band members) was released on Fradkin's Goin' Back solo CD in 2006 and features Caro, Finn, Cameron and Brown and Brown's father, violinist Harry Lookofsky. 

Martin, Cameron and Finn reunited as The Left Banke in 1978 to record an album's worth of songs but an album was not released. One single, "Queen of Paradise" (b/w "And One Day"), was released in late 1978 with some airplay. The album was issued by Relix Records in 1986 under the title Strangers on a Train (Voices Calling in Europe) but gained little attention or sales.

For fans, several of Michael Brown's post-Banke bands are collectible. Those bands include Montage, Stories, and The Beckies.

The 1992 Mercury Records compilation, There's Gonna Be a Storm: The Complete Recordings 1966–1969 collected almost all of their recorded output from those years.

None of the band members are still alive.

For more details see the band's Wikipedia entry and check out the fine video history below.

Little Feat

Little Feat is one of the most influential American bands of the seventies. Founded by Lowell George and Bill Payne in L.A. in 1969 they produced a series of highly original albums starting with Dixie Chicken and over the next decade produced an eclectic blend of rock 'n' roll, blues, country, folk, soul and jazz.

The death of Lowell George in 1979 brought the first phase of the band's existence to an end.

Lowell George met Bill Payne when Lowell was a member of Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention. Payne had auditioned for the Mothers, but had not joined. They formed the band along with former Mothers' bassist Roy Estrada and drummer Richie Hayward from George's previous band, the Factory. Hayward had also been a member of the Fraternity of Man whose claim to fame was the inclusion of their "Don't Bogart Me" on the million-selling Easy Rider film soundtrack.

The name of the band came from a comment made by Mothers' drummer Jimmy Carl Black about Lowell's "little feet" with the spelling tweak in the style of The Beatles.

In 2010, at a show in Atlantic City, NJ, the band Phish covered Little Feat's album, Waiting for Columbus, for their annual Halloween show. As a result of this concert and the distribution of its recording, Waiting For Columbus gained recognition from a wider audience among younger listeners.

In 2012, Little Feat announced the release of their first album of new material in nine years, Rooster Rag.




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This video captures the band's performance at the famous Dutch festival Pinkpop
in Live in Holland 1976 and captures the band's classic line-up at the peak of their powers.


Official band site http://www.littlefeat.net/