Originally published in American Music Press (1990s)
By Devorah Ostrov
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The Standells - publicity photo
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It's hard to imagine in these days of "Cop Killer," "As Nasty as They Wanna Be," and Madonna that four nice young men who simply suggested their fans "Try It" could cause such a hullabaloo. The commotion took place in mid-sixties America, and the group was the Standells, who were following up their smash teen-angst hits "Dirty Water" and "Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White" with the psychedelically infused and swiftly banned exhortation. Writing from the distance of 1972 in the liner notes to Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, rock historian and Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye declared the banning of "Try It" an honor. In reality, it spelled the end of the Standells' career.
"This guy, [radio mogul] Gordon McLendon, thought he was going to clean up the rock 'n' roll scene," fumes Standells' drummer/vocalist Dick Dodd.
Dodd, along with the group's keyboardist/vocalist Larry Tamblyn and guitarist Tony Valentino, had turned out in LA for a rare screening of Riot on Sunset Strip, which features performances by both the Standells and the Chocolate Watchband. "He was just a lot of hot air," continues Dodd, "but he was a very powerful man. He owned a bunch of radio stations across the country, and he said, 'I'm gonna tell kids what to buy and what to listen to.'"
"He went on the news," remarks Tamblyn, "showed a picture of our record and said, 'Don't buy this. It's a filthy record.' He made a national campaign out of us."
Shockingly innocent, the song never actually divulges what the band is urging its listeners to try, although popular opinion held it was a blatant plea for a girl to surrender her virginity.
Dodd recalls: "At the time, we just said, 'Well... er... uh... just try having a good time.' That's baloney! 'Try It' meant TRY IT! But McLendon took us on a TV show [Art Linkletter's House Party] and tried to rip us apart!"
However, like the P.M.R.C. vs. Twisted Sister/Frank Zappa hearings over record labeling some twenty years later, the moralistic moron underestimated the intelligence of the supposedly long-haired hooligans, and the nationally televised debate was a decided victory for rock 'n' roll.
"We creamed the guy," exclaims Tamblyn. "Even my brother, who's an arch-conservative, said we made the guy look like an idiot!" (The brother he's referring to is Warren; his other brother is actor Russ West Side Story Tamblyn.)
"He said how bad we were, how bad we were for the country," states Dodd. "We asked him about that song from the '30s. The lyrics go: 'Bees do it/Birds do it... Let's do it.' Well, what's 'do it'? It's the same as 'try it'! Plus, Larry had found out some things about McLendon..."
"We'd gone to Dallas [McLendon's hometown] to do some shows," says Tamblyn. "I found out that the man was a pervert! He'd been booked for statutory rape of his 13-year-old niece. So, we planted people in the [television] audience, and every time it looked like he was making some headway, somebody would yell out, 'What about your niece, McLendon?' He'd get red and look out into the audience to see who was saying it."
Dodd adds, "There were so many kids there with posters saying STANDELLS! and WE'VE TRIED IT! that it was pretty one-sided. But it was either going to be that way or everyone would've been on his side. I don't think it would've evened out, so we could've had an adult discussion about the song."
The band wasn't always so controversial. In fact, the liner notes to The Hot Ones! — a collection of Top Ten hits covered by the Standells that included the Monkees' "Last Train to Clarksville," the Kinks' "Sunny Afternoon," and Sam the Sham's "Lil' Red Riding Hood" — makes them sound about as wild as the Archies: "The Standells really like doing what they do. Sure, part of it's being famous and making money and who doesn't like that? But these four guys honestly dig their music, their performances, their recordings — yes, their fans too. They enjoy being a group."
Tamblyn and Valentino ("and two other guys") formed the nucleus of the Standells in 1962. The group's first job was in Hawaii as part of a Japanese floor show at the Oasis Club — they went on right after the stripper! When bassist Jody Rice and drummer Benny King left a few months later, Tamblyn assumed the leadership of the group (at one point the band's full name was Larry Tamblyn and the Standels; they added the extra l in 1963), and they came home to California.
Tamblyn picks up the story: "We were booked into some horrible club. Right from Hawaii we went to Fresno, and it was one of those clubs where we were playing to two or three people. We finally picked up [bassist] Gary Lane [later replaced by Dave Burke] and [drummer] Gary Leeds [establishing the band's first solid lineup] and played a number of clubs in Eureka and Sacramento. Eventually, we came back to LA, and there was an opening at the Peppermint West. It was the hot spot at the time!"
The Peppermint West was also where the band hooked up with manager Bert Jacobs. Tamblyn recounts the succinct negotiations: "He came in and said, 'Hey, I'd like to get you a contract and do a record.'"
Jacobs lived up to his word. Not only did he get the group a recording contract with Capitol Records subsidiary Tower he also arranged appearances for them in cheesy teen flicks like Get Yourself a College Girl and Zebra in the Kitchen. The band performed regularly on American Bandstand and Where the Action Is, and even guest-starred as rowdy housesitters for The Munsters in the episode "Far Out Munster." And no one lets Dodd forget about that.
"Every time somebody sees it, they say, 'Hey, Dodd, I saw you on TV last night. God, didn't you guys know how to sing back then?' We went in to record the songs for the show ["Do the Ringo" and a cover of "I Want to Hold Your Hand"], and this old guy came out and put the mike in the middle of the room, right? He goes into this booth, and I'm looking at the rest of the guys going, 'I don't believe this.' No headsets, no dividers, no nothing! He says, 'Go through the song.' We thought we were putting down a basic track — putting the bass, guitar, and drums on one track. So, we went through it a couple of times. Then he comes out and says, 'All right, we're going to take one. Now sing real loud.' We didn't do the music and then sing to the tape. We had to sing REAL LOUD!"
Exactly how the Standells went from safe churners of Top Ten covers to snarling teen punks is still being deliberated, but it all centers around a fortuitous meeting with producer/ songwriter Ed Cobb — himself a member of the ultra-clean Four Preps. The liner notes to a Rhino Records Best Of compilation lean towards giving Cobb the imaging credit: "Rather than a combined future in a Disneyland-like middle American heaven, Ed and the boys pulled a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde and bounded back with a very seething, resentful, provoking approach that was very influenced by the Rolling Stones."
On the other hand, Dodd (a former Mouseketeer, who replaced Gary Leeds in 1964 when Leeds joined the Walker Brothers) recalls his own sway on the group: "When I met the band they all wore suits, and they were playing really danceable, kind of tra-la-la music, while I was really into rock 'n' roll." He also acknowledges the group's effect on Cobb: "He was a real clean-cut kid. Then he met us and kind of changed!"
Whatever happened, it was Cobb who brought the Standells their first (and biggest) hit: "Dirty Water." Because of the song's well-known tag line ("I love that dirty water/Boston you're my home"), it's still hard to convince people that the Standells were LA-based. But the lyrics — which reference "lovers, muggers, and thieves" — were written about an actual incident. "Ed was in Boston," says Dodd, "and he was walking by the Charles River with his girlfriend checking out how grungy the water was, and some guy tried to jump him."
Tower released the single towards the end of 1965. By all accounts, the label didn't have any great belief in the tune, but it coveted a Ketty Lester record that Cobb had also produced. In July of the following year, "Dirty Water" astonished everyone when it climbed to #11 on the Billboard national chart.
"We kind of recorded it and then put it away," chuckles Valentino. "We were recording some songs with Sonny Bono at the time..."
"Yeah!" Tamblyn breaks in. "We recorded it along with 'Rari' and several others and had forgotten about it."
"We recorded it in a studio above this garage," reminisces Dodd. "It wasn't even air-conditioned or anything, and it was so hot in LA. The room was a sweatbox! So, we did 'Dirty Water,' and we all kind of looked at each other and went, 'Eh.' Then Ed called me up and said, 'Let's work on this vocal some more,' because he really didn't have the whole song finished. I came up with most of the last verse and [the intro]":
According to Dodd, he pleaded with Bill Wyman to take the Standells on the road with the Stones. "I was always saying, 'C'mon, take us on tour, man. You guys are really big stuff!' And this was just at the time that they were really hitting. The English thing was just humungous! So, Bill's saying, 'If you guys had a hit record...' Then for some reason, we were in Seattle, and our manager called us up saying, 'You guys will not believe what happened. You're #1 in Miami!' From being #1 in Miami — that's where the song broke — it just spread. The next thing I knew, we were on tour with the Rolling Stones. And in every city we played, 'Dirty Water' was at #1!"
It must have been a culture shock to go out on a tour of that magnitude, not just because of the Stones themselves, but the hysteria surrounding them.
"Yeah, that part was really weird," agrees Tamblyn. "Our first show — I remember it vividly — was in Boston. We were bigger than the Stones in Boston because of 'Dirty Water.' And there was a big riot. They were throwing tear gas at kids when we drove through town. It was like a war zone!"
"We'd get off the plane and there'd be 50,000 kids waiting to see the Stones," recollects Dodd, "and we'd have our limo, and the McCoys [fronted by a barely teenaged Rick Derringer] would jump into their limo... This is a funny story: We were doing a soundcheck somewhere in the Midwest. The Stones hardly ever came to soundchecks, and usually we really couldn't get a soundcheck. So us and the McCoys were just jamming, y'know. It was an empty auditorium. I wasn't playing drums; I was up front doing this whole Mick Jagger thing — just going crazy! I had a pair of sweat socks stuffed down the front of my pants, and I was prancing and dancing around. Everybody was cracking up! Then all of a sudden, we heard some people clapping toward where the lightboard was, and there were Mick and Keith just cracking up! He says, 'Very good. Very, very good.' I was so embarrassed. I was just going, 'Oh, no.' But he thought it was funny. Nothing ever came down that he thought we were making fun of him."
The two follow-up 45s — "Why Pick on Me" and "Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White" — lent their titles to the group's second LP but didn't sprint up the charts quite as quickly (reaching #54 and #43, respectively). Yet both maintained the gritty rhythm and blues attitude of "Dirty Water," and the growled lyrics cemented the Standells' tough stance...
Another Cobb-penned tune from the second album, "Have You Ever Spent the Night in Jail," was again based on personal experience. Recorded a year before the notorious Rolling Stones' drug busts, it was evidence, claimed one report, that the Standells were "the equivalence of a menacing, musical street gang."
"He went on the news," remarks Tamblyn, "showed a picture of our record and said, 'Don't buy this. It's a filthy record.' He made a national campaign out of us."
Shockingly innocent, the song never actually divulges what the band is urging its listeners to try, although popular opinion held it was a blatant plea for a girl to surrender her virginity.
Dodd recalls: "At the time, we just said, 'Well... er... uh... just try having a good time.' That's baloney! 'Try It' meant TRY IT! But McLendon took us on a TV show [Art Linkletter's House Party] and tried to rip us apart!"
However, like the P.M.R.C. vs. Twisted Sister/Frank Zappa hearings over record labeling some twenty years later, the moralistic moron underestimated the intelligence of the supposedly long-haired hooligans, and the nationally televised debate was a decided victory for rock 'n' roll.
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| Banned! The Standells' Try It LP |
"He said how bad we were, how bad we were for the country," states Dodd. "We asked him about that song from the '30s. The lyrics go: 'Bees do it/Birds do it... Let's do it.' Well, what's 'do it'? It's the same as 'try it'! Plus, Larry had found out some things about McLendon..."
"We'd gone to Dallas [McLendon's hometown] to do some shows," says Tamblyn. "I found out that the man was a pervert! He'd been booked for statutory rape of his 13-year-old niece. So, we planted people in the [television] audience, and every time it looked like he was making some headway, somebody would yell out, 'What about your niece, McLendon?' He'd get red and look out into the audience to see who was saying it."
Dodd adds, "There were so many kids there with posters saying STANDELLS! and WE'VE TRIED IT! that it was pretty one-sided. But it was either going to be that way or everyone would've been on his side. I don't think it would've evened out, so we could've had an adult discussion about the song."
The band wasn't always so controversial. In fact, the liner notes to The Hot Ones! — a collection of Top Ten hits covered by the Standells that included the Monkees' "Last Train to Clarksville," the Kinks' "Sunny Afternoon," and Sam the Sham's "Lil' Red Riding Hood" — makes them sound about as wild as the Archies: "The Standells really like doing what they do. Sure, part of it's being famous and making money and who doesn't like that? But these four guys honestly dig their music, their performances, their recordings — yes, their fans too. They enjoy being a group."
Tamblyn and Valentino ("and two other guys") formed the nucleus of the Standells in 1962. The group's first job was in Hawaii as part of a Japanese floor show at the Oasis Club — they went on right after the stripper! When bassist Jody Rice and drummer Benny King left a few months later, Tamblyn assumed the leadership of the group (at one point the band's full name was Larry Tamblyn and the Standels; they added the extra l in 1963), and they came home to California.
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| The Standells - publicity photo |
The Peppermint West was also where the band hooked up with manager Bert Jacobs. Tamblyn recounts the succinct negotiations: "He came in and said, 'Hey, I'd like to get you a contract and do a record.'"
Jacobs lived up to his word. Not only did he get the group a recording contract with Capitol Records subsidiary Tower he also arranged appearances for them in cheesy teen flicks like Get Yourself a College Girl and Zebra in the Kitchen. The band performed regularly on American Bandstand and Where the Action Is, and even guest-starred as rowdy housesitters for The Munsters in the episode "Far Out Munster." And no one lets Dodd forget about that.
"Every time somebody sees it, they say, 'Hey, Dodd, I saw you on TV last night. God, didn't you guys know how to sing back then?' We went in to record the songs for the show ["Do the Ringo" and a cover of "I Want to Hold Your Hand"], and this old guy came out and put the mike in the middle of the room, right? He goes into this booth, and I'm looking at the rest of the guys going, 'I don't believe this.' No headsets, no dividers, no nothing! He says, 'Go through the song.' We thought we were putting down a basic track — putting the bass, guitar, and drums on one track. So, we went through it a couple of times. Then he comes out and says, 'All right, we're going to take one. Now sing real loud.' We didn't do the music and then sing to the tape. We had to sing REAL LOUD!"
Exactly how the Standells went from safe churners of Top Ten covers to snarling teen punks is still being deliberated, but it all centers around a fortuitous meeting with producer/ songwriter Ed Cobb — himself a member of the ultra-clean Four Preps. The liner notes to a Rhino Records Best Of compilation lean towards giving Cobb the imaging credit: "Rather than a combined future in a Disneyland-like middle American heaven, Ed and the boys pulled a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde and bounded back with a very seething, resentful, provoking approach that was very influenced by the Rolling Stones."
On the other hand, Dodd (a former Mouseketeer, who replaced Gary Leeds in 1964 when Leeds joined the Walker Brothers) recalls his own sway on the group: "When I met the band they all wore suits, and they were playing really danceable, kind of tra-la-la music, while I was really into rock 'n' roll." He also acknowledges the group's effect on Cobb: "He was a real clean-cut kid. Then he met us and kind of changed!"
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| "Far Out Munster" — the Munsters meet the Standells |
Tower released the single towards the end of 1965. By all accounts, the label didn't have any great belief in the tune, but it coveted a Ketty Lester record that Cobb had also produced. In July of the following year, "Dirty Water" astonished everyone when it climbed to #11 on the Billboard national chart.
"We kind of recorded it and then put it away," chuckles Valentino. "We were recording some songs with Sonny Bono at the time..."
"Yeah!" Tamblyn breaks in. "We recorded it along with 'Rari' and several others and had forgotten about it."
"We recorded it in a studio above this garage," reminisces Dodd. "It wasn't even air-conditioned or anything, and it was so hot in LA. The room was a sweatbox! So, we did 'Dirty Water,' and we all kind of looked at each other and went, 'Eh.' Then Ed called me up and said, 'Let's work on this vocal some more,' because he really didn't have the whole song finished. I came up with most of the last verse and [the intro]":
"I'm gonna tell you a story
I'm gonna tell you about my town
I'm gonna tell you a big fat story, baby
Yeah, it's about my town..."
The amazing success of "Dirty Water" meant the Standells were in a position to tour the States. That they did so as openers for the Rolling Stones made the shows legendary. Just how did that US tour come about?According to Dodd, he pleaded with Bill Wyman to take the Standells on the road with the Stones. "I was always saying, 'C'mon, take us on tour, man. You guys are really big stuff!' And this was just at the time that they were really hitting. The English thing was just humungous! So, Bill's saying, 'If you guys had a hit record...' Then for some reason, we were in Seattle, and our manager called us up saying, 'You guys will not believe what happened. You're #1 in Miami!' From being #1 in Miami — that's where the song broke — it just spread. The next thing I knew, we were on tour with the Rolling Stones. And in every city we played, 'Dirty Water' was at #1!"
It must have been a culture shock to go out on a tour of that magnitude, not just because of the Stones themselves, but the hysteria surrounding them.
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Advert for the Standells at the Cheetah
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"We'd get off the plane and there'd be 50,000 kids waiting to see the Stones," recollects Dodd, "and we'd have our limo, and the McCoys [fronted by a barely teenaged Rick Derringer] would jump into their limo... This is a funny story: We were doing a soundcheck somewhere in the Midwest. The Stones hardly ever came to soundchecks, and usually we really couldn't get a soundcheck. So us and the McCoys were just jamming, y'know. It was an empty auditorium. I wasn't playing drums; I was up front doing this whole Mick Jagger thing — just going crazy! I had a pair of sweat socks stuffed down the front of my pants, and I was prancing and dancing around. Everybody was cracking up! Then all of a sudden, we heard some people clapping toward where the lightboard was, and there were Mick and Keith just cracking up! He says, 'Very good. Very, very good.' I was so embarrassed. I was just going, 'Oh, no.' But he thought it was funny. Nothing ever came down that he thought we were making fun of him."
The two follow-up 45s — "Why Pick on Me" and "Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White" — lent their titles to the group's second LP but didn't sprint up the charts quite as quickly (reaching #54 and #43, respectively). Yet both maintained the gritty rhythm and blues attitude of "Dirty Water," and the growled lyrics cemented the Standells' tough stance...
"Good guys, bad guys which is which
The white-collar worker or the digger in the ditch
Hey, and who's to say who's the better man
When I've always done the best I can..."
Another Cobb-penned tune from the second album, "Have You Ever Spent the Night in Jail," was again based on personal experience. Recorded a year before the notorious Rolling Stones' drug busts, it was evidence, claimed one report, that the Standells were "the equivalence of a menacing, musical street gang."
With the Try It album (released in 1967), the Standells began to flirt with a new psychedelic style. This experimentation culminated in two of their most innovative songs: the title track single (which Valentino points out was #1 at every radio station playing it before the ban) and the hypnotic "All Fall Down," written by Dodd. (While the original LP gave Dodd sole writer's credit, subsequent reissues and best-of compilations give co-writing credit to John Fleck).
Dodd remembers their producer being resistant to including "All Fall Down" on the album due to its anti-war sentiments. "I really fought for that one," he reflects. "It makes me feel good that you like it."
"I was hanging out at the Whisky," Dodd explains of the group's changing direction, "and all these bands were playing there — Love, the Byrds... that whole drug scene. In those days, everybody was getting high." Noting some raised eyebrows, he hurriedly tacks on, "I, myself, just drank milk!" Then he reveals how he came to write "All Fall Down": "I got mad one night because of what was happening in Vietnam. I was watching the news, seeing all these guys running through the fields, getting shot, dropping like flies. Then the announcer said, 'We're in the race again...' And this nursery rhyme was going through my head — Ring around the rosy/Pocket full of posies/Ashes, ashes/We all fall down."
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| Cover photo for the Dirty Water LP (Tower Records - 1966) |
The group's final singles were "Can't Help but Love You," an unconvincing stab at Stax-inspired soul which only reached #78 in the charts, and "Animal Girl," an out-of-character, standard love song which failed to chart at all.
But nothing beats the sounds on those mid-sixties Standells' records, as dozens of current bands imitating the aggressive stance of "Dirty Water" will attest to.
"The thing about it was, Ed wasn't really trying to capture great musicianship," offers Dodd, giving producer/songwriter Cobb as much credit as the band itself for the music's lasting impact. "He was just trying to capture an emotion, and he did a pretty good job. There's a few mistakes here and there, but the feel was right. We weren't hot musicians or anything. We just had something, a chemistry, that made us sound the way we did. We played well together."
By the way, what did they think of Riot on Sunset Strip twenty-five years on?
Dodd: Well, when it first came out, people weren't laughing that much. The language... The way the kids were saying things like, "C'mon bird, let's fly out of this joint!"
Tamblyn: And nobody ever really said, "Let's cut out!" Or when that reporter was talking to the other one, saying, "These kids are on grass and acid."
And what about their own performance?
Tamblyn: I thought we looked pretty good, actually! I compared it with some of the other groups [in the film], and I thought we could be doing the same thing today and pass pretty well.
This article was revised on April 17, 2017, based on information gratefully received from @Standells on Twitter.
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