It all ended in tears , of course , as Sloan ' s insistence on moving centre stage ultimately cost him his Dunhill career . His attempt to " ride the lightning bolt between creativity and commerciality " was over at the age of 22 . An alternative reading of his boy / girl break-up song , " Let me Be ", which the Turtles took to no . 28 on the Billboard chart in 1965 may , in hindsight , be seen as defining his attitude to art in general and in particular his on-going conflict with Lasker ;
' Please don ' t mistake me or try to make me / the shadow of anybody else / I ain ' t the him or her you think I am / I ' m just trying hard to be myself ... And I ' m not a pawn to be told how to move / I ' m sorry I ain ' t the fool you thought would play by your rules '.
If this was a verbal warning or a plea for understanding that he no longer wanted to be considered as a " gun for hire ", then the power-brokers at Dunhill were past caring .
This 2010 , 25 track compilation , lovingly put together by Ace Records , includes all the essential cuts from his halcyon days , together with less familiar offerings like the " The Sh-Down Song ", credited to The Ginger Snaps featuring Dandee Dawson , " Summer Means Fun " by future Beach Boy Bruce Johnston , Ramona King ' s no-nonsense slap down , " You Say Pretty Words " and a wounded Anne-Margaret , delivering the goods on " You Sure Know How to Hurt Someone ". In addition , the album comes with a superbly informative and well presented booklet that answers some of the questions surrounding the enigmatic Sloan . This includes a particularly poignant anecdote , concerning sixties ' soft pop exponents The Association , represented on You Baby by their version of Sloane ' s 1967 composition , " On a Quiet Night ", which bears repeating in this review . Headlining a show by the National Association of Songwriters in 1992 , Sloan was intrigued to hear The Association play the song " P . F Sloan ", which legendary songwriter Jimmy Webb had penned as a tribute to him , way back in 1970 . When Sloan went backstage to introduce himself to the band , they refused to believe he was the subject of the song , insisting P . F Sloan was a fictional character ! It should be noted that Webb , for whatever peculiar reason , had fueled rumours that P F Sloan was , in fact , a figment of his imagination . The lyrics themselves are suitably vague -
' I have been seeking P . F . Sloan / But no one knows where he has gone / No one ever heard the song / that good old boy sent winging / Last time I saw P . F . Sloan / He was summer burned and winter blown / He turned the corner all alone / But he continued singing '.
It can be easy to forget , so many years after the event , that throughout the ' mid ' 60s ', Sloan and Barri were helping to define and codify the burgeoning language of pop , in exactly the same way that the likes of Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly had done for Rock n ' Roll a decade earlier . The song titles alone re-construct a familiar narrative - " Anywhere the Girls Are ", " I Found a Girl ", " Summer Means Fun ", " Unless You Care ", " Where Were You When I Needed You ", " Another Day , Another Heartache ", " Only When You ' re Lonely ", " Things I Should Have Said " and “ All I Want is Loving " - by evoking the testosterone angst , the hormonal heartbreak , the teen trauma of the day .
You Baby not only chronicles the best work of an exceptionally gifted song-writing partnership , it serves , too , as a glorious reminder of pop music ' s salad days .
For those wishing to delve a little deeper into the work of P . F . Sloan , Ace released a collection of Sloane ' s own Dunhill recordings , Here ' s Where I Belong : The Best of the Dunhill Years 1965 to 1967 , back in 2008 and Sloane co-wrote his life story , with S . E . Feinberg , in the entertaining , if somewhat unreliable autobiography , What ' s Exactly the Matter with Me : Memoirs of a Life in Music .
Kevin McGrath writes for the respected cultural commentary website Wales Arts Review .
His blog http :// www . kgmcgrath . tumblr . com covers a variety of musical genres and is essential reading for news of the best new bands in Wales .
Editor ' s Notes : Sailover was not P . F . Sloan ' s last album . In 2014 he recorded the album entitled My Beethoven . It was released on November 3 rd , 2015 , and twelve days later , on November 15 th , P . F . Sloan , born into this world as Philip Gary Schlein , passed away from pancreatic cancer at his home in Los Angeles . Here , in his own words , is the story behind the album ...
“ I went stone cold deaf in both ears for 5 months while working on the album and I visited many ear doctors and they couldn ’ t find what was wrong with my ears as they were working fine without a problem . It seems when I vacationed with a friend in Puerto Vallarta I swallowed some ocean water that caused some sort of virus that affected my inner ear …. in the meantime I enjoyed silence like never before and learned how to lip read … I didn ’ t tell anyone but my closest friends and nobody else could really tell I had gone deaf as I nodded and said yes at the appropriate time .
The original song My Beethoven was 31 minutes long … it was to be a concerto … But during the process of many years I began to realize there were other songs inside that one so like a surgeon and a sculptor I cut them into their own song identities . I learned to play piano from listening to Glenn Gould exclusively . I had been listening to Rubenstein but Gould had the most exact playing without drama and loved Beethoven so much .
I started writing the music on a Krehling 1919 Chicago Bar piano , that just sort of fell into my lap when I needed it . The process of writing the lyric and the music as well as arranging it for an orchestra took over 10 years . The fascinating part of the process is that almost everything lyrically and musically had to be thrown away every six weeks as it felt inferior … The lesson I learned is that we all love our own shit without going deeper and deeper into the truth . What it took was the ability to find the real beauty and not what I thought was beauty ….. I found the universe supports you in the most unusual ways especially when you are going out on a limb and taking a road less traveled .” ~ P . F . Sloan 2