Running Faster Than an LP at 78 RPMs

On My Mind For 50 Years...and Counting!

I don’t know what were you doing 50 years ago, but August and September of 1965 were pretty big months in the life of this former 20 year old from Pomona who was then living his dream from a houseboat tied up near Sausalito on the San Francisco Bay. 

We Five’s hit single, “You Were On My Mind” was climbing the charts all across America and the ascent dropped us onto a merry-go-round spinning faster than a record played at 78 RPMs. In a period of about 8 weeks, We Five played concerts in Santa Clara with the Beach Boys, and in San Francisco with Herman’s Hermits and the Turtles. We flew south to tape several installments of “Where The Action Is” on the beach in Malibu, then appeared on Shindig, Shivaree, and Shebang further down Sunset Blvd in Hollywood. A PSA Electra Jet (remember those?) took us back to San Francisco to play a concert with Bill Cosby and to finish recording “Love Me Not Tomorrow.” It was the last song completed and the first track heard on our new album, We Five – You Were On My Mind. The album was released in September of 1965 with a reception at the Continental Hotel—while in Hollywood again for appearances at It’s Boss on the Sunset Strip. Since it was just down the street, we stopped in to Capitol Records to put the finishing touches on our 2^nd single, “(Let’s) Get Together,” in Studio B. 

 Exhilarating at the time, but 50 years later, I’m exhausted just thinking about it!

As the month ended, we were taping a live performance on the Hollywood Palace in a segment later memorialized with Fred Astaire’s introduction of us on YouTube: “A few weeks ago, five youngsters from San Francisco made a recording and just like that (Snap!), it became one of the top musical hits in the country.”

You can watch the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_f16t1JGHo, and for more backstories, check out my book, “Wounds to Bind – A Memoir of the Folk Rock Revolution” at www.woundstobind.com.