ARCHIE VS. DON KIRSHNER: "POUR A LITTLE SUGAR ON IT"
Salem Saberhagen presents
THE ARCHIES
In the Spring of 1988, The Archies recorded a demo tape intended for the ears of legendary record executive Don Kirshner. It sucked ass! Fortunately, he never heard it. Instead, he heard the soundtrack of a German indie film that the then-four-man band had cut the previous year. Dude set up an audition to find out if they sounded as good in person as they did on the CD! Two minutes into the first song they played, Mr. K knew that he would sign The Archies to his new Calendar Record label. Before the end of the audition, dude knew they'd be his top act!
Kicking one member to the curb (wannabe manager Dilton Doiley) and reconfiguring them into a three-man, two-woman band was the first step. Giving them a Tina Turner-style New Wave makeover (complete with nose jobs!) was the second step. Creating a Monkees-inspired TV series for them was the third step. The fourth step - transforming them into a chart-topping Pop phenom - proved to be a bitch to do, even for somebody like him!
Were The Archies the new Monkees? Don Kirshner damn sure wanted them to be! Toward that goal, he wrote and directed a summer movie to showcase them. Despite a well-received soundtrack album, BUTT NAKED BEACH PARTY ended up being the flop of the year! The first Archies single underperformed in sales and the second one crashed and burned; it was crunch time, and Mr. K knew it! If dude was going to keep The Archies from sinking into obscurity, he needed to come up with a smash-hit record for them and do it, like, yesterday!
Archie was just as concerned as he was. A devout Roman Catholic (half-Irish and half-Siciliano), dude began attending Blessed Sacrament Church after arriving in Hollywood; every Sunday at la misa, he prayed for that big break that would push his band over the top! One evening, Arch was driving in Echo Park and passed Angelus Temple, the Pentecostal megachurch founded by Roaring '20s evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. The front doors were open and mucho candente Gospel music was blaring out into the street! Archie knew that Gospel was one of the roots of Rock and Roll, and lately he was learning to love it.
"So what if it's not a Catholic church?," he reasoned. "It's still a Christian congregation!" He drove back, went inside to offer a prayer and found himself "slain in the spirit!" Dude was shouting, singing and clapping hands to "Oh, Happy Day" along with the big choir. That majestic, soulful sound wrapped itself around him and he was moved to tears; but it wasn't El Espíritu Santo making him cry. Arch was frustrated that he didn't know how to sing with that kind of Soul! Little did he realize that very soon, his knowledge gap would be filled.
T R A P P E D !
. . . IN A ROCK CANDY GROOVE.
"pour a little sugar on it"
THE YEAR 1989 (PART ONE)
SINGLES SESSIONS
EARLY JANUARY 1989
SINGLES SESSIONS
A JEFF BARRY INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTION
THE CAPITOL TOWER, HOLLYWOOD
MELODY HILL
(RITCHIE ADAMS, MARK BARKAN)
- single flipside
BICYCLES, ROLLER SKATES AND YOU
(RITCHIE ADAMS, MARK BARKAN)
- SUGAR, SUGAR LP
SUGAR, SUGAR
(JEFF BARRY, ANDY KIM)
- single
I’VE GOT TO FIND ME A WOMAN
(JEFF BARRY, ANDY KIM)
- unreleased
THE ARCHIES
w/ARTIE KAPLAN’S NEW YORK
w/RAY STEVENS
Music Supervisor:
DON KIRSHNER
Music Director:
RON FRANGIPANE
Arranger/Producer:
JEFF BARRY
Sound Engineer:
ZACHARY THAXTON
By early 1989, Chuck Clayton had signed on as The Archies' touring music director. They'd been needing one ever since Mr. K had pressured Dilton Doiley out of the band! At Chuckii's urging, they also brought former high school music teacher Geraldine Grundy on board - she'd been working with him off and on for years. Once upon a time, Jughead and Gino had been her students! She became the band's rehearsal pianist and concert arranger. Never part of Don Kirshner's staff, Chuckii and Deanie were paid a salary out of the group's earnings. What The Archies got for their money was well worth the investment!
Dilton's role had been to broaden the group's song repertoire, moving them away from Punk Rock screamers and toward classic Pop/Rock, Country, Reggae and Rhythm + Blues. Chuckii and Deanie chose to concentrate on their singing voices. Not for nothing, but . . . they fucking taught The Archies how to sing. He'd toured the Gospel music circuit as a boy evangelist; she'd played Folk music clubs back in the Sixties! Both of them knew the nuts and bolts of vocal technique, and over long hours of rehearsal they shared that knowledge with the group.
Archie and Veronica didn't know what to think when Deanie pounded them between the shoulder blades to make them project more forcefully! They also found Chuckii's instruction to endlessly "vamp" certain parts of a song tedious - until they saw the frenzied reaction that vamping produced in an audience. When this dynamic duo of music got through with them, they had a deeper understanding of fraseo, rítmo y tono than they'd ever had before. Their vocal ranges were expanded, too! Chuck and Deanie were layin' some hella professional music instruction on them, far more intense than anything they'd been taught in high school.
Under their direction, The Archies began their slow but steady evolution into a singing powerhouse! While cutting their vocal tracks, producer Jeff Barry took note of how their sound was improving; but it was on stage where the Folk and Gospel training had the biggest impact. With their new interpretive skills, instrumental chops that were already exceptional and a dynamic stage show crafted by Gino, The Archies became one of the best live bands working! Word of mouth from fans and peers was strong and getting stronger all the time.
If there's one thing you can say about Don Kirshner, it's that dude knew how to mount a concert tour. He learned from the best: Alan Freed, Dick Clark, Irving Feld, Bill Graham! But by the time The Archies came along, he was delegating most of the work to longtime employees that he trusted. Adam Sternfield booked the tours; he sent The Archies to venues ranging from medium-sized to huge, but never did they fail to sell out! Dude was a genius at knowing how big a crowd they could draw in any given town. Thanks to Adam's box office savvy, their Bitchin' Summer Tour was one of the top moneymakers of 1989!
The most personal time Don Kirshner gave to a new group was at the beginning, when he was grooming them for stardom; once they'd been launched, he depended on surrogates to keep him informed of their progress. His most important surrogate was his secretary, Vivian Song. Kirshner may have been widely praised for his ability to pick a hit, but it was Vibs who really had the "golden ears"! He depended heavily on her taste in music, which was impeccable - she'd chosen both "Daydream Believer" and "Pleasant Valley Sunday" for The Monkees!
Jeff Barry had to submit demos of every Archies song he wrote to Vibs for approval. Once she'd accumulated what she thought was a good batch, babe would book a studio session. Recently, she'd scheduled an especially promising quartet of tunes for tracking and per Mr. K's instructions, she brought them to his attention. Hungry for that chart-topper which had eluded him for months, dude got excited listening to "Sugar, Sugar." Golden ears or not, he sensed that a chart-topper was finally within his grasp!
Present to observe the date along with him, Ritchie Adams and Mark Barkan thought the song was a piece of shit - the worst thing they’d ever heard. It definitely was a radical change-of-pace from the Surf/Rockabilly sound The Archies were known for at the time; it rocked steady to a smooth Caribbean groove. Ritchie and Mark thought that kind of sound was all wrong for the group. “If you release it as a single,” they warned Kirshner, “it won’t even make Top Sixty!” Novelty music star Ray Stevens, guesting on background vocals at Toni Wine's invitation didn't think much of the tune, either. Sound engineer Zachary Thaxton (who everybody called Zakk Thax) concurred: “You can’t hit a homer out of the box every time.”
They changed their minds soon enough when the single broke for a smash hit out of San Francisco. Then it kept breaking all over the country! And then it caught fire overseas and finished by topping charts in the USA and a dozen different countries. ¡Increíble! It sold more copies than any Monkees single had. An Adams/Barkan song called “Melody Hill” was on the flipside; both men were able to fund their children’s college educations from the royalties! And Zakk Thax gladly ate crow: Dude got more work behind recording “Sugar, Sugar” than any other hit song he worked on.
Jeff Barry never doubted that it would be a hit. "When my co-writer Andy Kim played me the melody," he told his wife Nancy, "I felt chills! I knew it had something." Dude was inspired to write a suggestive lyric, but since it was for a kid's TV series he had to pull his punches! Vivian Song urged him to add an extra verse near the end; that's how the famous "pour a little sugar on it" line came to be. At the vocal tracking session, Veronica up and ad-libbed "I'm gonna make your life so sweet!" Then Toni Wine repeated the line. Don Kirshner loved it and demanded that it stay on the record!
Jeff was more focused on the music than the lyrics, though - especially that keyboard hook anchoring the melody. To reinforce it, he sent out for a baritone sax and had ace saxman Artie Kaplan duplicate the chord progression. Damned if it didn't fatten that hook up to King Kong proportions; but the blend was done so subtly, to this day most listeners don't realize that there's a saxophone in the mix!
Even while box office for BUTT NAKED BEACH PARTY tanked, “Sugar, Sugar” became a Pop music juggernaut. Whether The Archies’ “exposure” in that film had anything remotely to do with it or not, "Sugar, Sugar" sold enough copies to be the biggest single of 1989! Today it's an iconic Eighties record that has never left the public’s consciousness. Over the years, every kind of musician has covered it: Country singers, Soul shouters, Punk rockers, rappers and dozens of World Music artists including the late, great Bob Marley. As a matter of fact, I just heard a new reggaetón version that kicks ass!
There was a second potential smash on that studio date, but “I’ve Got To Find Me A Woman” just never happened. That was the tune Zakk Thax thought would be the killer single. The Archies dug it, too; they cut it again in 2008 during sessions for their ÉXITOS EN ESPAÑOL album. Not even a bitchin’ Reggae arrangement by Dilton Doiley Briseño and mad hot lead vocals by new member Trevor Santiago could light a fire under the tune - so that version stayed in the can, too. One of Jeff Barry and Andy Kim's most infectious compositions, it was also cut by The Rich Kids and The Neal Ford Factory; but its charms were lost on an indifferent public. ¡Demasiado!
ARCHIE'S BITCHIN' SUMMER TOUR
July 1989
El Paso TX - El Paso County Coliseum
New Orleans LA - The Fillmore
Biloxi MS - Mississippi Coast Coliseum
"the sugar, sugar/jingle jangle show"
