The Mojo Collection. Various Mojo Magazine
for hippies and too snappy for progressive rock fans, The Open Mind vanished at once when it appeared in early 1969, though du Feu believes it went to Number 1 in Japan. Resisting disillusionment, they returned to the studio shortly afterwards to record the mighty ‘Magic Potion’, a single whose frantic riff, demented drumming and furious guitar solos make many consider it to be the finest heavy psychedelic rock 45 ever produced in Britain. If anything was going to break them, it was this. John Peel put his weight behind it and it seemed reasonable to expect a breakthrough, especially give the heavier direction that rock was starting to take. Fate, however, intervened again. The censorious British media panicked at the song’s unabashed celebration of the joys of acid, and the single was swiftly banned. In the wake of this blow, a split became inevitable. The Open Mind was closed for business, leaving some of the heaviest music of the decade in their wake.
Euphoria
A Gift From Euphoria
Two musical nomads take psychedelic rock, bluegrass and orchestral ballads into lasting obscurity.
Record label: Capitol
Produced: Hamilton Wesley Watt Jr, William D Lincoln, Nik Venet aka Nikolas Venetoulis
Recorded: Western Studios & Sunset Sound Recorders, Hollywood, Nashville & Pye Studios, London; 1967–68
Release date: 1969
Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)
Personnel: Wesley Watt (v, g, d); William Lincoln (v, g, b, p, harmonica); David Briggs (p); Bobby Thompson (banjo); Lloyd Green (sg); Irwin Webb (ar); musicians of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra
Track listing: Lisa; Stone River Hill Song; Did You Get The Letter; Through A Window; Young Miss Pflugg; Lady Bedford; Suicide On The Hillside Sunday Morning After Tea; Sweet Fanny Adams; I’ll Be Home To You; Sunshine Woman; Hollyville Train; Docker’s Son; Something For The Milkman; Too Young To Know; World
Running time: 43.05
Current CD: Rev-Ola CRREV55
Further listening: These were their only recordings together.
Further reading: You just read it!
Download: Not currently legally available
Even for an era renowned for eclectic musicianship, A Gift From Euphoria treads a particularly fine line between grandeur and folly. This extraordinary record was the culmination of a musical odyssey that had begun five years earlier, when Bill Lincoln and Wesley Watt met while playing in rival groups in West Hollywood. They went on to cut singles under a variety of names, and worked with hit vocal group The Platters (they shared a manager). Success, however, remained elusive and by 1966 the two friends were on different continents. Watt headed for the thriving music scene in Houston, Texas while Lincoln had married an English girl and was living with her family above a greengrocer’s shop on the outskirts of Manchester. The experience would later inspire one of his most memorable songs: ‘Docker’s Son was written about her brother – their father was a watchman on the docks at the Salford shipyards just down the street. I used to hear the rag-bone man come by daily. It was a poor, working-class area, but it was full of interesting things to a young American.’
When Lincoln returned to the States he and Watt conceived their ambitious new project. The entire album was funded without any record company involvement after a family friend arranged a bank loan. Recording followed four distinct stages, beginning at Western Studios, Hollywood, where the orchestral tracks were laid down with the help of a young arranger named Irwin Webb and over 60 musicians from the Los Angeles Philharmonic. For the country songs they enlisted the help of a trio of session veterans in Nashville before travelling to London’s Pye Studios to complete the remainder and overdub vocals. Finally, they returned to Hollywood to add sound effects and sweetening and record one exuberant final track, Suicide.
Now all they had to do was find a record deal. Pitched unsuccessfully to the Apple label, the album eventually found favour with staff producer Nik Venet at Capitol Records. However, the band became caught in a power struggle within their new label: ‘It all got very ugly, Nik lost his job, we lost our album and the rest is non-history.’
Still friends today, Watt now runs a country music saloon in Sheboygan, Wisconsin while Lincoln works as an administrative assistant for a community college in Oregon. Until recently both were completely unaware that their album had been reissued.
Gandalf
Gandalf
Bar band record hypnotic one-off psychedelic classic.
Record label: Capitol
Produced: Koppelman–Rubin
Recorded: Century Sound Studios, New York; late 1967
Released: 1969
Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)
Personnel: Peter Sando (g, v); Frank Hubach (p, ep, o); Bob Muller (b); Davy Bauer (d)
Track listing: Golden Earrings (S); Hang Onto A Dream; Never Too Far; Scarlet Ribbons; You Upset the Grace Of Living; Can You Travel In The Dark Alone?; Nature Boy; Tiffany Rings; Me About You; I Watch The Moon
Running time: Unknown
Current CD: See For Miles
Further listening: Gandalf 2 (1970)
Further reading: There is little to be found on the band, something that is made harder by the fact there is an Austrian new ager and a contemporary metal band under the same name.
Download: Not currently legally available
In the explosion of record company interest occasioned by flower power, many excellent groups were treated shamefully. Take The Rahgoos. Having paid their dues for years in the bars and clubs of New York and New Jersey, they were offered a regular gig at the legendary Night Owl Cafe in Greenwich Village. Refining their set night after night at the centre of a scene including such luminaries as Fred Neil, The Lovin’ Spoonful and Tim Hardin, they were excellently placed for signing – and so it proved to be. Their friends Bonner and Gordon (writers of Happy Together amongst other hits) urged their managers Charlie Koppelman and Don Rubin to catch the band live in the summer of 1967. Blown away, they swiftly added The Rahgoos to their impressive roster, and a deal to release albums on Capitol via their own production company had just been struck. It all seemed too good to be true – and it was.
Firstly, they were made to rename themselves Gandalf, which they resented but agreed to. After a month of intensive rehearsals, they entered the studio at the end of 1967. The sessions were swift, and the band felt increasingly sidelined. ‘Don Rubin and Brooks Arthur, the engineer, were great to work with initially, but when they got what they needed, we were cut out of the sessions’, says their leader Peter Sando today. Cover versions dominate the album, including three by Tim Hardin, two by Bonner and Gordon and a magnificent rendition of Eden Ahbez’s much-loved Nature Boy, featuring a gut-wrenching, heavily distorted solo from Sando, whose own songwriting confidence was not yet fully developed. This is a great shame as, wonderful though the covers are, the group’s finest performances are reserved for his mere two originals – the wistful Can You Travel In The Dark Alone? and the thundering I Watch The Moon. The former features a dizzying blend of electric sitar, vibes and organ and the latter ends with a full-on psychedelic jam, complete with great swathes of fuzz guitar.
With such strong performances on tape, the group was understandably excited about its prospects – but as quickly as opportunity had beckoned them, they were spurned. Unbeknownst to them, the deal with Capitol was collapsing. When the record finally