Tuesday, November 17, 2015

P.F. Sloan 1945 -- 2015

If he had done nothing more than co-write this gorgeous folk-rock anthem, he would deserve to be immortal.




And don't even get me started about "Secret Agent Man."

11 comments:

FD13NYC said...

Always one of my faves, a very good body of work. The first Grass Roots album and The Fantastic Baggys, great stuff. Sad loss.

Steve D said...

Thanks for posting this. Great song. Sad loss.

Anonymous said...

Steve,
Sad, unexpected news, Steve.
In the early 80s, when you wrote about their album in STEREO REVIEW, you turned me on to the Red Rockers' cover of Sloan's "Eve of Destruction" (yes, he wrote that song, too). I still have the 45 in my collection.
Sloan's album "Measure For Pleasure" on ATCO is one of the great Buried Treasure LPs of the 1960s - it was out on CD a few years ago on the now-defunct Collector's Choice label; one hopes another label will license it and get it back in circulation.
The Fantastic Baggys' "Wax Up Your Board" and "Surfin' Craze" are two of the coolest surf songs ever.
I live in Canada and Sloan and Steve Barri, while they were at Dunhill, wrote a bunch of the hits ("Unless You Care", "Little Liar") that Canadian artist Terry Black had in the '60s - again, good commercial-pop with a folk influence, you still hear them on oldies radio in southern Ontario, where I live.
Sloan put out a book (an autobiography) in the last year or two that I need to track down.
Thanks for posting this news, Steve.

J. Lag

Anonymous said...

Sloan died after a short battle with pancreatic cancer.

J. Lag

Anonymous said...

Sloan added a lot of fuel to a mid-Sixties music scene which was already on fire.

The book is called What's Exactly the Matter with Me: Memoirs of a Life In Music. He was signing copies at local book outlets not that long ago.

My first exposure to him as a singer was The Sins of the Family, which got a lot of airplay in Berdoo circa summer 1965. Sounded kinda folk-punk to my ten-year-old ears, which was definitely a good thing. His solo version of Let Me Be was pretty good too.

Saw him at a little place in Altadena that Peter Lewis often plays. This would be 2007 or 2008. He sounded terrific.

Another Wrecking Crew member bites the dust. Sad.

VR - I mean really. How many songwriters have songs written about them?

Alzo said...

Not only did Sloan write 'Secret Agent Man' but he played the immortal riff!

P.F. Sloan was to the Turtles like Graham Gouldman was to the Hollies. Just thought I'd get that out there.

Avedon said...

And what most people don't know is that he also played the guitar intro on "California Dreaming".

He was also really sweet to me when I met him in London. I'm so sad about this.

Anonymous said...

One of the all-time greats.
Unfortunately many people just go "Who?" when you mention his name. Even The Association, who recorded Jim Webb's "tribute" to him, P.F. Sloan, had no idea it was an actual person they were singing about until much later. But thankfully most people know at the very least a couple of his songs.
The bio someone mentioned here earlier is an absolute must. A bit strange, much like the man himself, but a riveting read nonetheless.
R.I.P.

http://rnrloveletters.blogspot.is/2014/09/pf-sloan.html

Alzo said...

'The Wrecking Crew' movie disabused me of some hype that I bought into long ago: that The Association were themselves a collective of session cats. Silly me.

Anonymous said...

Greg Shaw and Bomp! mag probably turned me on to looking for the P.F. Sloan label credit on 45's. The Terry Black stuff is really good, nice electric 12-string. "He's My Man" by Ann-Margret is really great too.

Anonymous said...

P.F. Sloan, backed by members of the Wondermints, Andrew Sandoval and other locals, did an in-store appearance/performance at Amoeba Records in Hollywood in 2009. The Los Angeles Nuggets box set had just come out and Amoeba had Sloan, Jackie DeShannon (who did Splendor In the Grass), The Standells, Danny Hutton, Keith Allison and the Peanut Butter Conspiracy perform for the occasion.

Here's one of the songs in P.F.'s short stand-out set. Without a doubt, Mr. Sloan sounds terrific. More folk-punk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DAw90DiXnQ

VR - Kick that little foot, sally ann

Bonus:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA0GYJZYPEw