'Hotter Than A Match Head' - autobio of Lovin' Spoonful's Steve Boone

In the middle of reading this. A couple of passages are too awesome not to share:

We loved The Beach Boys’ music and got along great with just about every member of the band. Brian Wilson was by then out of the picture when it came to touring, but I loved talking about hot rods with his brother Carl, and Dennis Wilson was a life-of-the-party guy with a lot of charisma about whom no one could say a bad word.


The Beach Boys had a bigger fan base and more hits than we did, but by the winter of 1966, their image, and their relatively short haircuts, had become a little dated with some of the kids. I don’t know if The Lovin’ Spoonful were the cutting edge of hip, but we were pretty hot with audiences and there was a definite question about who was the biggest drawing card on this tour.


I don’t think any of us in The Spoonful really cared whether we went on first or second — again, we really respected The Beach Boys — but at one concert we showed up and were met with an itinerary that had us going on last, headlining the bill.


Apparently Mike Love saw this and flipped out — which should not have surprised me, since Love was the one guy in The Beach Boys who was a total dick and I could not stand. He was (and by most accounts remains) an obnoxious, boorish braggart, whose high and whiny singing voice would have been consigned to the karaoke circuit were it not for the fact that he happened to be the cousin of a musical genius named Brian Wilson. Love was born on third base, but based on his ungracious behavior I guess he thinks he hit a triple.


Anyway, once Mike Love dug in his heels about the billing, we suddenly cared. I didn’t want to fight with The Beach Boys, but no one wanted this marginally talented hack to get his way. The managers and promoters duked it out, and ultimately it was decided that we would alternate top billing for the remainder of the tour, which was by all accounts a big success.

=======

It was around this time that we were engaging in an increasingly common part of the band’s routine — getting on an airplane to fly to a string of live dates — when who did we see seated in the first-class cabin but Miles Davis. Musical deities didn’t come any more godlike in 1966 than Davis, and we all kind of nudged each other and whispered and discussed whether to approach him. John, who was the pedigreed muso and resident encyclopedia of musical knowledge in the group, decided he couldn’t let this moment slip away. Also, we were reasonably famous by this time and it seemed like all manner of great musicians, artists and entertainers were telling us how much they dug us too.

So John went up to Davis, and the gushing began: “Mr. Davis, I just wanted to tell you how much we love your music. Kind of Blue, Sketches of Spain … just amazing work.” He went on and on, nervously speed-talking and telling Davis how much our band loved his music and respected his contributions to jazz specifically and American art in general.


When he was finally done, Miles Davis just looked John Sebastian square in the face and said, “I don’t talk to honkies.”


When John recounted this, the rest of us just fell apart in hysterics. We could not control ourselves. For the rest of that trip John couldn’t initiate a conversation with any of us that wasn’t met with a reply of “I don’t talk to honkies.”

 

Thanks! I need to get this book.

 

Great book, fully discussed in a previous thread (search Steve Boone).

 

Woah, he sure speaks well of Mike Love.

 

Hmmm...if the story is true, one would think that an artist of Mr. Davis' stature would've been a little less rude and a bit more enlightened...yes, even in 1966.

 

Davis was a great musician but he was also a wife beater. He also said if had an hour to live, he'd spend it strangling a white person to let him know how life was like for a black in America.

http://www.avclub.com/article/miles-davis-beat-his-wives-and-made-beautiful-musi-105904

 

Thanks for posting. I love reading rock & roll biographies, and will get this book.

The Lovin' Spoonful was the very first rock concert I attended. I think I was 11. John Sebastian played a solo gig at a local church/folk venue a couple of years ago ("The Sanctuary", in Chatham, NJ), and I got to talk with him after the show (BTW, his guitar playing has always been very underrated, but his voice is shot). I said something like, "Hi, John, haven't seen you around in the last 50 years!" We both had a laugh.

 

Good book with a lot going on before, during, and after the Lovin' Spoonful's glory days. I saw the Spoonful in concert several years ago (Steve Boone, Joe Butler, and Jerry Yester). After the show, as I approached the meet and greet table with Joe Butler's Revelation/Revolution '69 album, Steve said, Uh-oh, look what's comin',Joe." Joe said, "Oh no! Nekkid! Stark nekkid! I'm so embarrassed!" Steve said, "You weren't too embarrassed back then."

 

Great book indeed! I kinda got bored towards the second half and all the boat talk, but that's me (more interested in the LS days).

 

I had a long conversation with Wayne Shorter (interview) in the '70s and asked him about Miles Davis' alleged racism. Shorter (passionately) said it was complete nonsense. He said that Davis took plenty of crap for hiring white musicians like Chick Corea and John McLaughlin in the era of black power, but told those black critics to get out of his face.

Not to say that Spoonful story wasn't necessarily true -- cool that the band took it as funny.

 

Miles was indeed quite bigoted. I've read many many other much worse stuff he's said.

Amazing that he gets a free pass with that stuff. I guess if you're black, you can't be racist and if you are white, you cannot help but be a racist.

 

Miles wasn't racist...he just liked messing with white people to see how they'd react.

His best friend was Gil Evans.

 

Not a racist. Miles hated everybody!

 

Whatever, but after reading this I still like Miles better than Mike Love.

 

And yet he treated it as a status symbol when non-black men married blacks. I'm referring to what he told Joe Zawinul. MD was a hypocrite and a bigot.

 

Or he didn't want to be bothered by a member of a group he might not have known. We also don't know if he was taking the piss out of Boone.

 

Miles hired and and gave too many white musicians their big break for him to be characterized as a "racist", pure and simple. Seems he had a mean streak in him that extended to everyone, regardless of race, and his lifelong drug problems probably exacerbated it. No excuses or justification for the wife beating, though, none whatsoever. The Lovin' Spoonful thing seems more like him being mischievous than actually racist, though, despite what he said.

Anyway, I like what I've read already from Steve's book.

 

Anything's possible, I suppose. Still a little on the rude side, in my estimation.

 

Not Boone. John Sebastian.

 

Correct. Confused myself because Boone shared the story that John told him.

I wouldn't disagree. I never met Davis myself but he does come off as often rude and considered many people fools and he didn't suffer them lightly in a lot of stuff I've read.

Sadly there are many musical geniuses who had Less than their fair share of humanity. Then again we have to consider the history of African-Americans at the hands of the average white person. I could see how that could harden someone that way. It's not an excuse mind you just an observation.

 

This was Miles Davis' reward for refusing a white cop's order to "move along" while having a smoke outside a club with his name on the marquee... No wonder he was bitter.

Some empathy is in order.

 

I know I've said this before, but I knew someone who was a friend of Coltrane's for a number of years. He would go to parties often at Trane's house. His statement to me about Miles was 'no one sucked the life out of a room like Miles Davis'. He said Miles was negative all the time, he talked bad about practically everybody and much of his conversation was about insulting people in the room or other jazz musicians. This man also said the worst part of Miles legacy was that he felt that many jazz musicians took their cues from Miles behavior and behaved badly to promoters, fans, etc. These people used to compare notes and could always spot someone who played with Miles by the moved he behaved.

 

Yes, it must have been extremely difficult for Miles growing up in his upper middle class home with his successful landowning dentist father who could afford to send him to Julliard and to then have to deal with dedicated white people like Teo Macero who gave him all that support and respect. It must have really sucked having young white people praising him all the time. Who did he think bought all his records? Why didn't he move to Europe if he was so unhappy here?

 

This thread started on a very fun and funny note....and it's turned into some pretty ugly stuff as it goes along. I'm not even remotely comfortable with the tone and comments here that, especially in light of what happened last week in Charleston, add to my discomfort.

 

I support your right to feel uncomfortable. However, I see nothing in this thread to be uncomfortable about.