Listen: Where Were You When I Needed You / The Grass Roots
Where Were You When I Needed You / The Grass Roots

These guys had a string of sizable and worthy successes through the late 60′s and into the 70′s. Pretty poppy but very musical stuff, including a few covers of should-have-been hits, like The Marmalade’s English smash ‘Lovin’ Things’ and The Forum’s ‘The River Is Wide’. All their records past the first few incorporated soul, brass or percussion heavy songwriting in an English sounding setting.

The early stuff seems most non-existant, even though their second single, ‘Where Were You When I Needed You’, became a hit, perfectly marrying a British Invasion image with west coast folk rock jangle, and peaked at #28.

Listen: Only When You’re Lonely / The Grass Roots
Only When You're Lonely / The Grass Roots

It’s followup, ‘Only When You’re Lonely’, in a very similar style, had a brief moment at #96, and is largely forgotten. Too bad, it’s a good one.

The whole Grass Roots story is a bit manufactured. The act was basically an outlet for writers and Dunhill Records owners PF Sloan and Steve Barri to latch onto LA’s folk rock movement, which had an undeniable UK slant, much like The Sir Douglas Quintet purposely went British Beat to gain success. In actuality, The Grass Roots’ first three singles were by an entirely different band from the one that followed and proceeded to have hits.

Their original sound, of which ‘Only When You’re Lonely’ basically concluded, rivaled The Byrds, who clearly ran with both it and the image in their teeth, thereby claiming the prize of massive success.

I have a nagging instinct The ‘Only When You’re Lonely’ Grass Roots easily had the initial footings of a great band to be. Early clips, there are very few, show them possessing a natural body language, much closer to say, The Seeds, than the later successful lineup, more easily compared to clumsy high school football team players, true visual eye sores indeed, like The Turtles or The American Breed.

Were the original Grass Roots destined to be the real deal, we will never know.

Listen: Go Where You Wanna Go / The 5th Dimension 5thDimensionGoWhere.mp3

Listen: Another Day, Another Heartache / The 5th Dimension 5thDimensionAnother.mp3

The California Folk Rock mafia, a description I have totally made up, probably did exist around ’65-ish. In my fantasy world, it included PF Sloan, John Phillips – all of The Mamas & The Papas I suppose, Dunhill Records, Jim Webb, Steve Barri, probably even Sonny Bono in a certain way. They were the big cheeses, writing, producing, releasing the hits. The Grass Roots certainly benefited. And so did The 5th Dimension. They were literally M & P soundalikes. This is way before they went all schmaltzy upon their switch to Bell Records. Prior, and including these first two singles, they recorded for Johnny Rivers vanity imprint: Soul City Records, a division of Johnny’s label Liberty. He had gads of hits, and for whatever reason, he got to set up Soul City. Great. Worked for me. I loved all those initial 5th Dimension singles. Even the huge hits that hinted at blandness to come (‘Up – Up And Away’ particularly) have aged just fine.

Rivers produced these two psychedelic tinged classics (John Phillips wrote the first), and probably had a lot to do with their output. Great choice of tapping into Laura Nyro’s catalog – not one but three times for single A sides.

Their west coast, carefree, vague LSD, pre -Tate/La Bianca murders, LA pop marked, in hindsight, the ending of an era.