Beverly Bivens

Bev Bivens
Birth name Beverly Ann Bivens
Born April 28, 1946 (1946-04-28) (age 69)
Santa Ana, California, U.S.
Genres Folk rock, avant-garde jazz
Occupation(s) Singer
Years active Mid 1960s
Labels A&M
Associated acts The Ridgerunners; We Five; Light Sound Dimension; Joshi Marshall

Beverly (Bev) Ann Bivens (born April 28, 1946) was lead singer with the American West Coast folk-rock group We Five from 1965-67. After her marriage to jazz musician Fred Marshall and the break-up of We Five, she sang for a while with the experimental Light Sound Dimension, but, by the late 1960s had largely left the music scene. After many years of relative seclusion, she sang at the opening of an exhibition in San Francisco in 2009. Her son is the saxophonist Joshi Marshall.

Background

Beverly Ann Bivens was born in Santa Ana, California on April 28, 1946.[1] Her father, Charles Walter Bivens (1914-1982), was originally from Arkansas, with pre-revolutionary Welsh antecedents who probably came to America via London, England.[2] Beverly attended Santa Ana High School (attended also by Bill Medley of The Righteous Brothers, as well as members of the Chantays and actress Diane Keaton, who was her contemporary)[3] and Orange Coast Junior College,[4] where she majored in liberal arts.

Mid 1960s: We Five

With the encouragement of her mother, Bivens had developed her singing voice as a child. Around 1963-4, she began performing with Mike Stewart (1945–2002) and Jerry Burgan, who had formed a folk duo at high school and branched out into electronic music with guitarist Bob Jones (died 2013), whom they met at the University of San Francisco. She had been recommended to Mike Stewart by Terry Kirkman, later of The Association, who was then the boyfriend of her sister Barbara.[5] In 1963, she and Glen Campbell, who also played banjo, had performed background vocals on Desert Pete, a recording by the Kingston Trio, of which Stewart's brother John (1939–2008) was a member. With the addition of Pete Fullerton, the new group, initially called the Ridgerunners[6] and, for a while, the Mike Stewart Quintet, became known as We Five.[7] They recorded their first album, the highly eclectic You Were on My Mind, for A&M records in 1965 after Herb Alpert, founder of A&M, heard them at the "hungry i", a folk/night club on Jackson Street in the North Beach area of San Francisco.

You Were On My Mind LP: We Five, 1965

You Were on My Mind

We Five's first single, from their debut album of the same name, was a reworked version of Sylvia Tyson's song You Were On My Mind. It became one of the first folk-rock hits,[8] reaching number three in the Billboard "Hot 100" in August 1965.[9] Tyson (then Sylvia Fricker) says that she was unaware that her song had been "covered" until she heard We Five's version on a car radio while driving on Highway 101 in California.[10] One consequence of We Five's success was that Tyson's song, which, until then, had been unavailable in sheet form, was published by Witmark of New York, with a photograph of Bivens and We Five on the cover.[11] However, with the so-called "British invasion" at its height, We Five's recording had only limited international success, having been covered reluctantly, though successfully, in Britain by Crispian St. Peters.[12]

On 2 October 1965, We Five performed You Were on My Mind live on the ABC television show The Hollywood Palace, on which they were introduced by guest compère Fred Astaire.[13][14] Video footage of this performance survives, as does that of appearances around the same time on the Jack Benny and Bob Hope shows and Shivaree. There have been some claims that Bivens did not sing on the original studio recording of You Were on My Mind and that the female voice was that of another artist. However, most sources, including We Five's Jerry Burgan in his 2014 memoir, have rejected this suggestion.[15]

Subsequent singles

A subsequent 1965 single, Chet Powers's Let's Get Together, was a more modest commercial success, reaching number 31 on the Hot 100. The song, which had been recorded in 1964 by the Kingston Trio, became a much bigger hit in 1969 for the Youngbloods under the shortened title Get Together.[16][17]

A third single, You Let a Love Burn Out, was trailed by A&M as a "3rd We Five smash in a row" on the back of a Grammy nomination for You Were on My Mind.[18] Released early in 1966, its "twangy-oriental sound", with Bivens "really put[ting] her voice in front of the others and set[ting] the tempo for the remainder of the group"[19] represented a significant departure of style that, in various ways, was to be adopted by other bands in the coming year. However, it made limited public impact, a fate shared in May 1966 by a further single, There Stands the Door (which was coupled with Somewhere, a song from the 1957 musical West Side Story). Pete Fullerton felt that, with both these recordings, "there was always that edge of whining".[20]

Influence and style

Beverly Bivens with We Five, 1966

Bivens' voice gave We Five its distinctive and memorable sound. Almost operatic in quality, its range was described as low tenor to high soprano.[21] Bob Jones has recalled that "Bev had this husky kind of voice, and somehow there's this old soul in there".[22]

Bivens' performances on the album You Were On My Mind and in concert largely foreshadowed a female vocal style that, by 1967, was associated with, among others, Elaine "Spanky" McFarlane, Grace Slick of the Great Society and Jefferson Airplane,[23] and Cass Elliot and Michelle Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas. Bivens was said to have inspired Jefferson Airplane's original vocalist Signe Toly Anderson, who was already well established on San Francisco's jazz and folk scene before joining the Airplane. It may be no coincidence either that Karen Carpenter who, like Bivens, had a fine vocal range, was signed by Alpert to A&M, with her brother Richard, in 1969.[24]

Bivens' influence was apparent too in recordings by some male bands: for example, the Turtles' single Happy Together and the Cowsills' The Rain, the Park and Other Things (both major hits in 1967), as well as I Will Have You (1966) by the seemingly imitative British band, Just Five.[25] In 2002, the British newspaper The Independent described We Five as having "bridged the gap" between Peter, Paul and Mary and the Mamas and Papas;[26] indeed, Bivens' voice and that of Mary Travers had a similar atmospheric quality, although Bivens' was the more commanding. In the latter respect, there was a similarity with both Judith Durham of the Australian group the Seekers[27] and Dusty Springfield, initially of the Springfields,[28] who made their names in England in the early to mid-1960s as the lead singers of folk-oriented groups. Others whose vocal delivery has borne comparison have included, in the 1960s, Judy Dyble (the original lead singer of England's premier folk-rock band, Fairport Convention), Kerrilee Male and Dorris Henderson (successive lead singers of Eclection), and, more recently, Lavinia Blackwall of Trembling Bells[29] and Zooey Deschanel in her recordings with M. Ward as She & Him.[30] Jerry Burgan has cited Stevie Nicks of the British band Fleetwood Mac.[31]

Personal interests and images

In 1965 Bivens' personal interests were said to be fashions, Chinese food and freedom.[21] As regards fashion, photographs show her wearing dresses whose hemlines were well above the knee in 1965, at a time when the mini-skirt, which, in England, became a defining symbol of "Swinging" London, had yet to make a wide impact in America.[32] Bivens was then 5 foot 3 inches tall, with brown hair and hazel eyes.[33] Musicologist Alec Palao has described her as "a petite powerhouse with demurely attractive looks [and] a penchant for European style".[34] Surviving television clips capture her rather chic, mod style of dress, with bobbed hair and go-go boots. She was sometimes mistaken for the actress Barbara Feldon, co-star of the television series Get Smart, who also had a bob.[35] Bivens' relatively brief career covered a period in which she was one of a fairly small number of female rock musicians: her classic style, at least until 1966, was in contrast to the more Bohemian look favored by contemporaries like Grace Slick or Janis Joplin.

At that time Bivens' favorite band was the Beatles, "... which is fairly obvious. I haven't really heard any that I really like besides the Beatles".[36] Many years later, she recalled that, when We Five played in Pittsburgh in late 1965 with another English band, the Rolling Stones, she had been ignored by the Stones' lead singer Mick Jagger when she had tried to introduce herself.[22][37] Jerry Burgan recalled that she was shunned also by Jagger's fellow band-member Brian Jones.[31] On another occasion, Bivens defended Peter Noone, the young lead singer of Herman's Hermits, whose apparent lack of self-control was criticized by other members of We Five, pointing out that he was only seventeen and was not, in her view, being managed properly.[31]

In October 1965 KYA, a leading San Francisco radio station, used a large photographic portrait of Bivens to draw attention to its inaugural International Pop Music Awards (maybe patronising her a little in the process with its caption, "Wee One of the We Five").[38] Other photographs of Bivens included those of We Five taken by Lisa Bachelis (later Lisa Law), using a Leica given to her by the group's manager and producer Frank Werber (1929–2007), who also managed the Kingston Trio, of which, as noted, Mike Stewart's brother, John, was a member.[39] We Five sometimes used Werber's home at Mill Valley to rehearse; one photograph taken there shows Bivens barefoot in a bikini top and jeans, while the group used, among other things, a broom in place of a microphone.[40] Bivens appeared barefoot also on the cover of You Were On My Mind, walking along a beach in a reddish-orange tunic, accompanied by her male colleagues, all fully shod and wearing matching turtlenecks. Bivens enjoyed sunbathing: she was once admitted to hospital on tour with second degree burns after Burgan, who had been called to her room, found her in considerable pain, wearing only the lower half of a bikini.[31]

1966-67: Split of We Five

We Five were in the vanguard of the San Francisco bands, including Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, that reached international prominence in the "Summer of Love" of 1967.[41] However, the original band had disbanded by then. Jerry Burgan and Pete Fullerton reformed We Five. Burgan's wife, Debbie, née Graf, who sang with a group called the Legendaires and had sometimes worked with the Ridgerunners (as they then were), took over from Bivens as lead vocalist.[6] A group known as We Five was still performing forty years later.

In his notes for We Five's second album, Make Someone Happy (1967), released after they had split (an episode that later give rise to unfounded rumours that Bivens had been killed in a road accident),[42] satirist George Yanok observed that

"We 5 was the first "electric band" to come out of San Francisco. It predated the entire present "happening" in the Haight-Ashbury [a district of San Francisco that became the centre of "flower power"] with all its attendant trippery and hang-overs …".[43]

Yanok asserted also that "there was nothing psychedelic or arcane about We 5's music". However, various elements of the music of the psychedelic era, notably Bivens' vocal delivery, which Yanok described as "a major reason for this [We Five's] special something", were plainly discernible in We Five's output (for example, on Let's Get Together and such tracks as If I Were Alone,[44] Love Me Not Tomorrow,[44] You Let A Love Burn Out[45] and Bivens' blues solo on Judy Henske's High Flying Bird,[45] which she has described as "like her heart song").[46]

Circumstances of the split

The precise reasons for the break-up of the original group remain unclear, although there has been periodic speculation and comment over the years. Most versions have tended to focus on Bivens herself. Jerry Burgan recalled that, among a number of complicating factors, some of band, notably Mike Stewart, were "frankly in love" with her and has referred to, in his words, "an instinctive caution innate either to Beverly or to young women generally [in the mid 1960s] whose ties to social tradition were all about to unravel".[31] The official website of the latter-day We Five, which was in a position to capture the collective memory of some its original members, explained that "Beverly turned her back on stardom to marry ... [to] explore experimental music, and become a mom".[6] A year before her marriage, she had described touring without her boyfriend as "a big drag"[47] and has since reflected that, by the time of the split, she was "kinda dancing" and that her husband was having an influence on her.[48] However, there have been suggestions that, among other things, differences within the group and aspects of its management were also factors.[49] Bivens was not the only member of We Five who abandoned a performing career prematurely. Peter Fullerton left the music business altogether around 1970 to work with homeless people in the Bay Area and much later put out two albums of mostly religious music to benefit his charity, the "Truck of Love."[50]

Despite her undoubted magnetism and the powerful effect she seems to have had on her colleagues,[31] Bivens was, in some respects, an "outsider". She was the only female member of We Five, while the four men all went to college together: Stewart, Jones and Burgan were graduates of the University of San Francisco, and Fullerton knew Stewart and Burgan from their days at a junior college in Los Angeles County, Mt. San Antonio College. The academic background of each was recorded prominently on the sleeve of You Were On My Mind, together with the information that Bivens had attended junior college. There were other mild hints of condescension: the same sleeve notes recognised that Bivens' "unusual brilliance and vocal range is the basis of our sound" and that she was "the spark of the group", but referred also to her "genuine involvement in singing and desire to learn", while, many years later, the We Five website referred curiously to Stewart and Burgan's having added "the sound of a female voice that was eventually to be made famous by Beverly Bivens".[6] (This is perhaps consistent with another, possibly ironic, sleeve reference to Bivens' instrument as her throat, although it may allude also to the Ridgerunners' original female singer, Sue Ellen Davies, a coloratura whom the other members had met at Claremont High.[51])

Issues of achievement and management

The original We Five, and Bivens in particular, did not fulfill their potential during their rather short career. They were managed by Frank Werber, and the production of their recordings was handled by Werber's own company, Trident, rather than by A&M Records. In a 2002 Jerry Burgan attributed the band's collapse in part to the band's management, reflecting that "the dissolution was rooted in unfocused management that permitted a very young group to have too much autonomy. We factionalized into a blues contingent, a pop contingent, and an 'I'm out of here' contingent."[52]

Despite Herb Alpert's own recording success, A&M was a rather small record label compared (for example) to RCA, who signed We Five's local contemporaries Jefferson Airplane.[53] The band's success was greatly hindered by the fact that their second album, with Bivens as the lead singer, was not released until late 1967, over a year after it was recorded and six months after the band's final concert in May 1967 in Winona, Minnesota.[54] In 1968 We Five were among a number of A&M's artists included in an injunction by a Los Angeles court prohibiting the "pirating" of their recordings by a company named Superba Tapes.[55]

We Five are sometimes dismissed as a "one hit wonder", although they actually had two charting singles and were the highest charting 1960s band from San Francisco until Creedence Clearwater Revival in 1969.[56] Jerry Burgan spoke more kindly of the band's management in 2007, recalling that Werber "had an ability to encourage creativity and the musical process without having to direct it. While encouraging us [We Five] to write, to sing, and to play, he surrounded us with a team that shaped all of the other elements which led to our success". However, there may be a certain implication in Burgan's further observation that "we were too young to see it at the time, but I later learned to appreciate the impact he had on my life".[57] The 2009 compilation, There Stands the Door, to which all the surviving members of the original We Five contributed recollections, was dedicated to "the late, great Frank Werber".

Bivens in retrospect

The two albums featuring Bivens were re-released as a compilation compact disc by Collectors' Choice Music in 1996[58] and a further compilation, including some previously unreleased recordings, including jingles for Coca Cola, was issued in 2009 by Big Beat under the title of There Stands The Door: The Best Of We Five. Because of her short period of contemporaneous fame, Bivens has remained a rather elusive figure, but one whose voice has plainly been cherished by many who heard her in the mid-1960s. Although Mike Stewart appears to have been the "engine" of We Five, putting in extra hours to attend to arrangements of the group's material,[59] George Yanok's notes for Make Someone Happy were perhaps revealing in that they concentrated on Bivens' centrality to We Five virtually to the exclusion of the other members: according to Yanok, she was "totally honest, gifted and possessed". Yanok also observed that We Five's music was about "fun" and that it was "unfortunate that that 'fun', in this age [i.e. 1967], has become equated with frivolity and dismissed as trivia".

Even so, although Bivens' documented recording career lasted less than two years and extended to little more than two dozen tracks, it seems very likely that, had she remained in the industry (and there was no suggestion that she herself – "the miniskirt-wearing, free spirit of the band"[60] – had become passée).[61] her soaring voice would have made her a big star. She herself has confirmed that "A&M called, they wanted me, but I think my husband [Fred Marshall, whom she married in 1966] insisted he produce the records ... I'd been working hard for a long time and just thought I'd take a break – turned out to be a couple of decades!"[46]

Late 1960s: Fred Marshall and the Light Sound Dimension

On February 13, 1966, at the age of 19, Bivens married jazz bassist Fred Marshall (Frederick Calvin Marshall, 4 October 1938 - 14 November 2001).[62][63] Marshall had worked with a number of West Coast rock bands and been a member of the Vince Guaraldi Trio which famously recorded the incidental music for television specials based on the Peanuts cartoons of Charles Schulz.[64] Guaraldi had been an habitué of the hungry i club and Marshall's own band, the Ensemble, played at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco on the same bill as Jefferson Airplane on the night in October 1966 that Grace Slick first sang as their lead vocalist.

In 1966, Marshall began to collaborate with lighting technician Bill Ham (William Gatewood Ham, born 26 September 1932), who is generally credited with creating the first psychedelic light show, a concept that originated in the "beat" era of the 1950s and became a feature of many late 1960s rock concerts.[65] Together with Jerry Granelli, who, in addition to playing on We Five's first album, had also worked with Guaraldi[66] and been a close associate of the songwriter and producer Sly Stone,[67] they formed the Light Sound Dimension (which, as with the Beatles' 1967 song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, many were quick to notice bore the initials LSD), an "audio visual multi media group" combining lighting technology and experimental music.[68] The LSD, which continued into the 1990s, established itself at various West Coast venues, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Fillmore Auditorium (which, with its "omnipresent pot smoke" noted by songwriter Carole King,[69] became known for its psychedelic posters), and appeared with, among others, Big Brother and the Holding Company and the Grateful Dead.

Vocal experimentation

After leaving We Five, Beverly Bivens sang for a while with the LSD, her work including vocal experimentation paralleling Yoko Ono's.[6] A photograph taken backstage in 1968 at the LSD's own theater in San Francisco (which ran for about 18 months from January 1968) shows Bivens and Marshall with Ham, Granelli, saxophonist Noel Hawkes (born 18 June 1940)[70] and Ham's assistant Robert (Bob) Fine. One observer wrote at the time that:

Using rear projection to flood a wide screen with essentially liquid images, and large speakers to project highly amplified jazz-electronic improvisations, the LSD. is an intensely dedicated, highly gifted group of light artists and musicians who carry abstract light-sound art to perhaps its ultimate in purity and concentration.[71]

Less prosaically, Hawkes recalled the LSD as "far out ... It was a mind opening experience. We were on the cutting edge, you might say, back then".[70]

Family and later activities

1970s-1980s

During the 1970s, Bivens appears to have done some session recording, as well as making occasional appearances on television and recording radio jingles. Until their divorce in 1978,[72] she and her husband raised two children in Berkeley, California: the saxophonist Joshi Marshall, who was born in Berkeley in 1971, and a daughter, Zoe Terry Marguerite. In 2014 Joshi, who has a son, Elijah Cole, with wife Leah,[73] recalled an unorthodox childhood which was dominated by his parents' passion for music: "Everything was about music and art. It was like, you sleep here and you sleep there, and you have to be part of our trip ... But I wouldn’t trade it for anything, there was so much love".[74] An earlier publicity biography of Joshi stated that, while still at Berkeley High School in the latter half of the 1980s, he would "play in and host sessions with his mother ... and many notable jazz musicians which included saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and pianist, Benny Green."[75] However, Bivens' career after leaving We Five is not well documented publicly and, until Jerry Burgan published a memoir of the early folk-rock scene in 2014,[31] sketchy information was derived mainly from recollections posted on the Internet. Various rumours that she had died persisted for many years.

1990s and early 21st century

Jerry Burgan reported that, when he spoke to Bivens in 1999, she was not singing professionally.[6] After Fred Marshall died in Oakland in 2001, an obituary published in his home state of Arkansas referred to Bivens' still living in Berkeley and to his having had another partner of long standing.[76] However, it appears that, when Marshall fell ill, Bivens stepped in to care for him.[31] In the mid noughties Bivens was said by Burgan to be doing up an old house.[77] This was subsequently sold and, when Burgan saw her in 2013, she was living in "a warehouse district" between Berkeley and Richmond.[31]

Re-emergence (2009) and Jerry Burgan memoir (2014)

Joshi Marshall recorded "special thanks" to his mother in connection with his album, In The Light, released in May 2009.[78] The sleeve notes for Big Beat's retrospective CD of We Five's recordings, released in 2009, contained several reminiscences by Bivens[79] and, on 24 September of that year, she sang High Flying Bird at the opening of an exhibition, mounted by the Performing Arts Library & Museum in San Francisco, of the rock scene in the Bay area in the mid-1960s to early 1970s.[80] Asked by an ABC reporter if the latter appearance marked a resumption of her singing career, she remarked teasingly, "God, I hope so. That would be awesome".[81]

A memoir by Burgan, touching on Bivens' years in the Ridgerunners/We Five, her impact on the early folk-rock scene and subsequent forty-year seclusion was published in April 2014 by Rowman & Littlefield.[31] It is clear from this that Bivens has remained very circumspect about her life since We Five and, apart from her appearance in 2009, has resisted attempts to encourage her to sing again. Even when she and Burgan visited Bob Jones during his final illness in 2013, she was unwilling to sing High Flying Bird, which the men strummed on their guitars, an omission for which, according to Burgan, she expressed regret during the return journey.[31] The three were, however, photographed together.

Discography: We Five (with Beverly Bivens)

Albums

The tracks shown in italics were solo (S) or largely solo performances by Beverly Bivens. However, her voice dominated virtually all recordings by We Five and some others (SF) contained marked solo flourishes.

1. "Love Me Not Tomorrow (S)" 2. "Somewhere Beyond The Sea" 3. "My Favorite Things" 4. "If I Were Alone" 5. "Tonight" 6. "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" (SF)[82] 7. "You Were on My Mind 8. "Can't Help Falling in Love" 9. "Small World" 10. "I Got Plenty O' Nuttin'" 11. "Softly As I Leave You" (SF) 12. "I Can Never Go Home Again" (SF)
1. "Let's Get Together" 2. "High Flying Bird (S)" 3. "Make Someone Happy" 4. "Five Will Get You Ten" 5. "Somewhere" 6. "What Do I Do Now" 7. "The First Time" 8. "Our Day Will Come" 9. "Poet" 10. "What's Goin' On" 11. "Inch Worm" 12. "You Let A Love Burn Out"

Other

External links

Notes

  1. ↑ California Birth Index, 1905-1995. Sacramento, CA, USA: State of California Department of Health Services, Center for Health Statistics
  2. ↑ http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/b/i/v/Gary-Keith-Bivens/WEBSITE-0001/UHP-0083.html Bivens is derived ultimately from the Welsh ap Evan (son of Evan) and would typically have been anglicised after settlement in England. An 18th century ancestor, Nathaniel Bivens Sr., then living in North Carolina, married Peggy Tyler from London.
  3. ↑ Jonathan Moor (1990) Diane Keaton: The Story of the Real Annie Hall. Keaton was three months older than Bivens; Keaton graduated in the class of 1963, Bivens in the class of 1964.
  4. ↑ Sleeve notes for LP, You Were on My Mind (1965)
  5. ↑ Beverly Bivens, quoted in sleeve notes for CD There Stands the Door; http://aln3.albumlinernotes.com/There_Stands_The_Door.html; Jerry Burgan with Alan Rifkin (2014) Wounds to Bind: A Memoir of the Folk-Rock Revolution
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Wefive.net
  7. ↑ The name is thought to derive from We Seven (1962), the title of a book by the seven Mercury astronauts.
  8. ↑ Richie Unterberger in Mojo, October 2011
  9. ↑ Charlie Gillett & Simon Firth (1976) Rock File 4. This was A&M's first hit record that was not made by Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass.
  10. ↑ Richie Unterberger, interview with Sylvia Tyson
  11. ↑ Tyson's friend (and early girl-friend of Bob Dylan) Suze Rotolo recalled that, in the early days of Ian & Sylvia, Sylvia Tyson's abilities as a songwriter were not acknowledged as people "just assumed that Ian was the writer and that she was there to look lovely and sing beautifully" (Rotolo (2008) A Freewheelin' Time).
  12. ↑ St. Peters reached number two in the British charts in January 1966: Rock File 4 (ed. Charlie Gillett & Simon Frith, 1976). He disliked the song and his recording achieved chart success only after prolonged plugging by his record company, Decca: Brian Matthew, Sounds of the 60s, BBC Radio 2, 17 January 2015.
  13. ↑ Video on YouTube
  14. ↑ The Hollywood Palace: Host: Fred Astaire / We Five / Jackie Mason - TV.com
  15. ↑ Brian Matthew on BBC Radio 2, Sounds of the 60s, 6 December 2008; Jerry Burgan with Alan Rifkin (2014) Wounds to Bind: A Memoir of the Folk-Rock Revolution
  16. ↑ See Rock File 4 (ed Charlie Gillett & Simon Frith, 1976)
  17. ↑ Sounds of the 60s, BBC Radio 2, 28 July 2007
  18. ↑ A&M publicity material reproduced with sleeve notes for CD There Stands the Door (2009)
  19. ↑ Review by Kathi Koscki (1966), reproduced with sleeve notes for CD There Stands the Door (2009)
  20. ↑ Sleeve notes for CD There Stands the Door (2009)
  21. 1 2 Sleeve notes for You Were on My Mind (1965)
  22. 1 2 Sleeve notes for CD There Stands the Door: The Best of We Five (Big Beat, 2009)
  23. ↑ Grace Slick's delivery was rather more "edgy", being described by James Goodfriend, Music Editor of Stereo Review, as "beautifully focused, but [with] the kind of steely edge to it that forbids prettiness" (sleeve notes to CBS LP The Best of Grace Slick, 1974).
  24. ↑ A&M continued over the years to have an instinct for spotting striking female talent. A more recent example was their signing of the Welsh singer Aimee Duffy in 2007.
  25. ↑ Sleeve notes for After Tonight: Ember Beat Vol.3 (1966-67) (2009). Just Five's lead singer was Sam(uel) Mahood.
  26. ↑ Pierre Perrone, obituary of Michael Stewart, The Independent, 27 November 2002. In Wounds to Bind: A Memoir of the Folk-Rock Revolution (2014), We Five's Jerry Burgan substituted Jefferson Airplane for the Mamas and Papas.
  27. ↑ Jerry Burgan has described We Five's approach to Sylvia Tyson's You Were On My Mind as "the Seekers, but with balls" and drawn attention to similar harmonization on that recording and the Seekers' Georgy Girl (1966): Burgan with Alan Rifkin (2014) Wounds to Bind: A Memoir of the Folk-Rock Revolution.
  28. ↑ In the late 1950s, Dusty Springfield, then known by her birth name of Mary O'Brien, had been a member of group called the Lana Sisters. Burgan has observed of Springfield that "her epic bluesiness ... was something only another woman - only a Beverly - might really grasp": ibid.
  29. ↑ See, for example, John Mulvey in Mojo, October 2010 regarding the Bells' being "aligned" with Fairport Convention and "ending up today as a band with a palpable crush on Jefferson Airplane".
  30. ↑ For example, the albums Volume One and Volume Two (Domino, 2008 & 2010) and cover version of the Smiths' Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want for the film (500) Days of Summer (2009). The Sunday Times described Deschanel's songwriting as "steeped in sublime West Coast harmonies and references to the classic folk-pop of the 1960s and 1970s" (Hardeep Phull, Sunday Times Culture, 21 March 2010).
  31. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Jerry Burgan with Alan Rifkin (2014) Wounds to Bind: A Memoir of the Folk-Rock Revolution
  32. ↑ See, for example, Lisa Law (1987) Flashing on the Sixties. The mini-skirt really only took off internationally after British model Jean Shrimpton caused much controversy by wearing a shift dress four inches above the knee at Derby Day, first day of the Melbourne Cup Carnival in Australia on 30 October 1965: see Shrimpton (1990) My Autobiography.
  33. ↑ Interview with Tiger Beat c. 1965, reproduced in sleeve notes for CD There Stands the Door: The Best of We Five (Big Beat, 2009).
  34. ↑ Alec Palao, notes for CD There Stands the Door (2009)
  35. ↑ Jerry Burgan with Alan Rifkin (2014) Wounds to Bind: A Memoir of the Folk-Rock Revolution. Bivens appears to have adopted a bob, then extremely fashionable in England, at some point in 1965. Some photographs from that year, including one by Lisa Law, reveal a slightly longer style, parted in the middle. Photographs on the sleeve of You Were on My Mind show her with the bob, the style seen also in October 1965 on the Hollywood Palace television show and the cover of KYA Beat. Some have even likened her bob to that of Paul McCartney of the Beatles.
  36. ↑ Interview with Tiger Beat. Others, including Michelle Phillips (Mamas and Papas) and John Sebastian (Lovin' Spoonful), have described the inception of folk-rock as essentially a fusion of folk music and the Beatles, epitomised by the Byrds' recording of Bob Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man (1965): Folk America, Part III (BBC2, February 2009).
  37. ↑ By contrast, Petula Clark, an established international star who was Jagger's senior by ten years, recalls chatting casually backstage with him at a concert in Paris in 1965: "He was charming, very intelligent and funny" (Mail on Sunday Event, 23 November 2014).
  38. ↑ KYA Beat, 23 October 1965, vol 1, number 13
  39. ↑ As both Mike Stewart's brother and a member of the Werber stable, Stewart was an influence on the development of We Five, a factor recalled by Jerry Burgan following John Stewart's death on 19 January 2008: Wefive.net. Stewart had left the Cumberland Three to replace Dave Guard in the Kingston Trio, which, unlike many other folk groups of the late 1950s and early 1960s, eschewed politics and wore matching short sleeved shirts and short haircuts (Donald Clarke (1995) The Rise and Fall of Popular Music). Suze Rotolo recalled that she, Bob Dylan and Ian and Sylvia Tyson had scorned the cover of a Kingston Trio album "because the trio looked so collegiate and square in the photo" (A Freewheelin' Time, op.cit.). Shortly before leaving the Trio in 1967, Stewart wrote the Monkees' hit Daydream Believer, and in 1968 worked for Robert Kennedy's Presidential campaign. Burgan has described Stewart as his mentor.
  40. ↑ Lisa Law (1987) Flashing on the Sixties
  41. ↑ In the early days of We Five there was only a cluster of bands in San Francisco, but by December 1966 there were some 1,500 flourishing in the Bay Area: Myra Friedman (1973) Janis Joplin: Buried Alive
  42. ↑ Wefive.net Various stories circulated to this effect; some have attributed them to confusion with a serious accident sustained in August 1969 by Nancy Nevins of the West Coast band Sweetwater. Another rumour, which seems to have persisted into the 21st century, was that Bivens had committed suicide.
  43. ↑ Sleeve notes for LP, Make Someone Happy (1967)
  44. 1 2 You Were on My Mind LP (1965)
  45. 1 2 Make Someone Happy LP (1967)
  46. 1 2 Sleeve notes for CD, There Stands the Door: The Best of We Five (Big Beat, 2009)
  47. ↑ Interview with Tiger Beat, c.1965
  48. ↑ Sleeve notes for There Stands the Door (2009)
  49. ↑ An Internet "blog" posted in 2002 contained the text of an e-mail purportedly from Bob Jones of the original We Five. Though dating the split of the group to 1969 (which must surely be a mistake), Jones noted, among other things, that "Bev went on to sing "free jazz" with her husband" and that Jerry Burgan obtained the rights to the name of We Five from Bivens, Stewart and himself. There was perhaps a hint of discord in Jones' recollection of the re-formed group that "except for an unfortunate gig we did together in the North Bay later, I was never involved in any of that" Clackscellar.com
  50. ↑ Truck of Love Music
  51. ↑ See sleeves notes to CD There Stands the Door (2009). Jerry Burgan recalled that Davies "started singing along, and Michael [Stewart] locked onto the sound that you could get from a girl" (ibid.)
  52. ↑ Ask the We Five, Wefive.net
  53. ↑ Grace Slick (1998) Somebody to Love?
  54. ↑ Sleeve notes to CD There Stands the Door (2009)
  55. ↑ Los Angeles Times, 13 April 1968
  56. ↑ By comparison, Jefferson Airplane had only two top 20 hits (the highest, Somebody to Love reached number five in 1967), while the Grateful Dead never had a top 20 hit. Jimi Hendrix had several hits in the UK, including a posthumous number one (Voodoo Chile), but his only top 20 entry in the USA was All Along the Watchtower (1968). By the mid-1960s albums were seen increasingly as more significant, especially artistically, than singles.
  57. ↑ Jerry Burgan, reflecting on the death of Frank Werber: Wefive.net
  58. ↑ DPSM 5172 (distributed by PolyGram)
  59. ↑ Los Angeles Times, 9 May 1965
  60. ↑ Description of Bivens by journalist Steve Thorn, who interviewed Pete Fullerton at length in 2008, Sandiegotroubadour.com
  61. ↑ George Yanok wrote simply that Bivens (like Bob Jones, who was also not part of the reformed We Five) was "making individual plans of [her] own": sleeve notes for Make Someone Happy (1967).
  62. ↑ Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 16 July 2000; 22 November 2001
  63. ↑ Ancestry.com. California Marriage Index, 1960-1985 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2007. Original data: State of California. California Marriage Index, 1960-1985. Microfiche. Center for Health Statistics, California Department of Health Services, Sacramento, California.
  64. ↑ The first special for CBS was A Charlie Brown Christmas, broadcast on 9 December 1965.
  65. ↑ Frieze Magazine, issue 46 (May 1999)
  66. ↑ Jerrygranelli.com
  67. ↑ Interview with John Sekerka, 2000 on CHUO FM in Ottawa
  68. ↑ Billhamlights.com
  69. ↑ King recalled that "the light shows were best appreciated under the influence of the omnipresent pot smoke at the Fillmore, where contact was high and unavoidable unless you literally didn't inhale": Carole King (2012) Natural Woman.
  70. 1 2 Noeljewkes.com
  71. ↑ Thomas Albright, 24 August 1968, quoted in The Rolling Stone Rock 'n' Roll Reader (ed Ben Fong-Torres, 1974)
  72. ↑
  73. ↑ Joshimarshall.com
  74. ↑
  75. ↑ Leftcoasthorns.com
  76. ↑ Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 22 November 2001.
  77. ↑ We Five - You Were On My Mind (Live On Hollywood Palace) on YouTube
  78. ↑ Joshimarshall.com, Marshall extended thanks also to his wife and sister and the album was dedicated to Fred Marshall.
  79. ↑ There Stands the Door: The Best of We Five (Big Beat CDWIKD 286, 2009)
  80. ↑ Shindig-magazine.com
  81. ↑ ABC news report, 25 September 2009. See also Flickr.com
  82. ↑ "Wind" is singular, though shown as "Winds" on the album sleeve.
  83. ↑ Though the titles were given in Spanish, all four songs on the EP were the English versions from the album You Were On My Mind.
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