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