By music biz standards, P.F. Sloan was once crazier than Roky Erickson and Syd Barrett trying to plan a weekly budget for Wesley Willis. Most of the successful songwriters of the ’60s knew to talk liberal and invest conservatively. Sloan, however, bought into the hippie movement. Along with partner Steve Barri, he was making plenty of money writing hits for pop acts like Herman’s Hermits and The Turtles.
Sloan and Barri even created a fake Sunset Strip band called the Grass Roots assembled to sell the duo’s more rock-oriented tunes. Nobody could figure out why Sloan was determined to fight his own establishment. Then Sloan's anti-establishment ways paid off in 1965, when a former New Christy Minstrel was impressed by the songwriter's sullen attitude.
Singer-songwriter Barry McGuire walked away with Sloan’s “Eve of Destruction.” The faux-Dylan hit single would inspire Sloan to pursue a solo career. He didn’t realize that folkies would dismiss his catchy and humorous tunes as calculated commercialization. Undeterred, Sloan signed away all his songwriting royalties to get released from his contract at the pop-oriented Dunhill label.
This would be a good time to note that Sloan wrote “Secret Agent Man.” Start doing the math from there.
Things didn’t go well for Sloan. By the time he released his final proper album in 1972, he was known as an emotionally troubled victim of a changing record biz. Now he’s back with a fine new album. A lot of the songs—mostly recent originals—are even better than his early solo work. Plus, it’s got guest musicians like Lucinda Williams and Frank Black to up the street cred. Best of all, Sloan looks great and sounds in fine spirits these days.
“Sailover,” he explains, “was my first experience in the studio where it felt good to be creating. My producer, Jon Tiven, had relationships with all the musicians on the album—people like Buddy Miller and Frank Black and Lucinda Williams. I was just familiar with their work. Well, not so much Buddy Miller, but I’m really glad I became aware of him. He’s a phenomenal talent.”
Sloan also remains political and sounds perfectly reasonable about his concerns for his country. Let’s not forget that “Eve of Destruction,” used as a rallying cry by supporters of the 26th Amendment which changed the voting age from from 21 to 18, pissed off folks on both the Right and the Left. (“I must have been doing something right,” laughs Sloan.) He’s also philosophical about the strange twists of his own career.
“I can give you two examples where being ripped off is positive,” Sloan notes. “Denny Doherty, of The Mamas & The Papas, told me that he was ripped off for a tremendous amount of money in the ’60s. He didn’t recover the money until 10 years ago. He told me, seriously, that had he gotten that money back then, he would’ve been dead. The money would’ve been spent on negative pursuits.”
Not surprisingly, the other example is manly hippie Barry McGuire. “He told me that if he’d had another hit after ‘Destruction,’ he would’ve been dead. His lifestyle was basically self-destructive.”
Sloan pauses, and then adds something that probably still makes him crazy by music biz standards: “Nobody knows what the real plan is to all this. It’s amazing that God works this way, and prevents you from getting the money you’re supposed to get until you’re wise enough to have it.”
August 24. Joe’s Pub, 425 Lafayette St. (betw. Astor Pl. & E. 4th St.), 212-254-1263; 7:30, $20.
