Enter the Association
Thoughts on the great pop group's first four albums
Welcome music lovers to a new edition of ‘Listening Sessions’!
For a while, I have had writing a long essay on one of my favourite pop groups from the mid sixties, the Association, on my to-do list for my Substack, to be focused on their first four albums which cover the years 1966 to 1968, the period of their greatest success.
Well, I’ve finally written it and needless to say, I have enjoyed revisiting the music and organizing my thoughts on why the Association were unique among their contemporaries and why their best music goes well beyond their hits. I hope you enjoy it and will share your thoughts on the Association as well.
Over the next two months, I’m going to be making a change to the publication schedule here to accommodate two projects that will eating up some of my time—one related to the work I do here and the other, not so much. Instead of the usual, 10-day interval between editions, ‘Listening Sessions’ will come out every two weeks until the end of April. As a result, the next time I will be in touch will be on March 19 with an essay on jazz altoist Jackie McLean and his 1963 recordings, One Step Beyond and Destination… Out!
Until then, may good listening be with you all!
If you’re not yet a subscriber of ‘Listening Sessions,’ I hope you'll click the button below to subscribe and get each edition delivered straight to your inbox. I publish a long-form essay on music three times a month, every 10 days or so.
If you are a subscriber, please share ‘Listening Sessions’ with any music fans in your orbit.
“In order to combat the sudden influx of machines into our affluent society, you see before you a machine of our own construction. You see before you an Association machine composed of many integral parts.” - bassist Brian Cole of the Association
It’s true to the spirit of the three days of music offered in mid-June 1967 at the Monterey Fairgrounds that prior to the iconography of the one-upmanship of the Who and Jimi Hendrix, Cass Elliot shaking her head in marvel at Janis Joplin, Ravi Shankar stirring the audience into silence and Otis Redding bringing soul to the flower children, the Monterey International Pop Festival would start with the Association.
The artists who performed at Monterey were impressively representative of what was already being recognized as a moment of time when the music of the youth was becoming more sophisticated, literate, daring and consequently, important.
And it was not just those who were synonymous with the counterculture like Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and Country Joe & the Fish. It was also Lou Rawls, Simon & Garfunkel, Johnny Rivers, Laura Nyro and, yes, the Association. There was a breadth to the Monterey bill—it would have been even wider if acts like the Impressions, the Beach Boys and Dionne Warwick had all appeared as planned—that continues to enshrine Monterey as the rock festival of rock festivals.
Bassist Cole continues his opening monologue and introduces his bandmates, “…the first being behind us is a semi-reclined percussion invertebrator or drummer … err … err”—Ted Bluechel Jr.—”in the centre of the machine, we see a digit-flexing instrumentator or guitar”—Jim Yester—“towards the other end of the machine, we see a transistorized digit-flexing instrumentator stamped ‘Made in Japan’”—Larry Ramos—“to my immediate right, we see a manifold bifurcated tambourine-a-chinger”—Russ Giguere—“I am a consistent low-range modulator. Last but not least, the largest single component in the machine, an elongated fluting vocalizer”—Terry Kirkman—“this machine, when programmed correctly, emits a variety of sounds and rhythmic patterns such as…1-2…1-2…”
Cole, Yester and Ramos then triple the riff that starts the song that launched the Association, ‘Along Comes Mary.’ The song, written by Tandyn Almer, one of the truly elusive figures as rock and pop became countercultural, is wordy and complex especially in the third verse set on “the morning of the warning’s passed” in which “the gassed and flaccid kids are flung across the stars,” a sign that “the psychodramas and the traumas gone / the songs are left unsung and hung across the stars.”
At Monterey, the group plays and sings with drive. The tempo is only slightly faster than the hit version but the forward momentum is far more pronounced. It’s a song about, yes, marijuana (although it works too if it was about a magical, head-turner of a girl named Mary) played by a band that was definitely one of the straightest groups to appear.
They were the only band that was attired in suits and ties (but not matching ones)—not even Booker T. & the MGs went that far, opting for mohair and turtlenecks. Take a closer look, though. Notice Kirkman’s long sideburns and Giguere’s tinted glasses and Paul McCartney-like moustache. Notice as well the flower that is on the left of the neck of Yester’s guitar. They are all subtle hints that there was more than meets the eye when it came to the Association.
After the final “sweet as the punch” of ‘Along Comes Mary,’ the crowd warmly applauds. The Association, at that time, were one of the leading groups of so-called sunshine pop, a peppy, happy sound powered by optimistic harmonies and often even more optimistic lyrics. At its best, it was glorious, resplendent of California’s splendour. When it wasn’t, it could be offensive in its inoffensiveness—twee and saccharine, liable to give an ear as well as a stomach ache. ‘Along Comes Mary’ was definitely the former.
It was the third single the group had released—the Association emerged out of the Men, a deluxe-sized (13 members!) aggregation active in the fall of 1964 and the winter of 1965. The group was then comprised of Cole, Bluechel Jr., Yester, Giguere, Kirman and Jules Alexander (all but Yester emerged from the Men). They were signed to Valiant Records, distributed by and then eventuallly bought by Warner Bros. Records.
Soon after ‘Along Comes Mary’ shot up the charts in the spring of 1966 came And Then…Along Comes the Association. The album was produced by Curt Boettcher who was credited with speeding up Almer’s song and creating the demo that was the template for the Association’s recording.
On the album cover, the group is seen in a field in a triple-exposed photo. The dominant shot has them posing directly to the camera; another has them walking across the field in profile and the other catches them in mid-jump just like the Beatles’ on the run in A Hard Day’s Night. The multiplicity of shots are a hint to the group’s many facets.
The album begins with ‘Enter the Young,’ a call-to-arms written by Kirkman. Anchored by the repeating of the line “here they come” and a folk-rock arrangement, Kirkman’s song tells of a new day that the young generation will herald—a kinder, more empathetic one. A message like this could be almost embarrassingly naive but here, it is anything but. The vocal arrangement—a double-tracked Kirkman sings lead with the rest of the group supporting him—has a transcendence to it. By the time they get to the final chorus, there is an exhilaration as they tell—with Yester’s fragile alto riding on top—of a young who have “not only learned to think but to care / not only learned to think but to dare” (that last word is stretched through a slow climb up the musical staff). Hearing the whole group give voice to these words and how the music has led up to this moment of triumph can take one’s breath away, both in terms of the grandeur of the sound—the beauty of human voices working in concert—and in the culmination of ‘Enter the Young’s message that nurturing, rather than shielding, young people is an act of faith that will be infinitely rewarded. Politics or sociology aside, the performance is one of the most impressive opening tracks to lead off a debut album.
Flash-forward two years to Birthday, the Association’s fourth album, and another opening track. ‘Come on In,’ written by folk singer Jo Mapes, is a headlong rush that culminates in a coda with a collage of voices in counterpoint. At just before the 2:50 mark, under a repetition of the vocal line “baa-baa-baa-daaaa,” the group repeats the song time with the harmony impossibly deep and thick, all encompassing, expressing in excelsis an idea, a wish, a philosophy, take your pick, or simply that the Association were far from your garden-variety sunshine pop group.
If songs like ‘Along Comes Mary,’ ‘Enter the Young’ and ‘Come On In’ illustrate one mode of the group, ‘Cherish’ elicits another. The other smash hit on And Then…Along Comes the Association and one of its two chart-topping hits, ‘Cherish’ is one of great standards of the rock era. Written by Kirkman—he claimed he wrote it in 30 minutes—the song has an ache, a deeply felt message of romantic longing that meditates on the pain of the unattainable. The song’s protagonist puts the object of his affection on a pedestal but who hasn’t at some point. The gallantry of “oh I’m beginning to think that man has never found / the words that could make you want me / that have the right amount of letters, just the right sound / that could make you hear, make you see, that you are driving me out of my mind” is affecting both in its specificity and its quixotic hope that a glimpse of paradise on earth could actually rest on but a turn of phrase.
Kirkman and Giguere spilt the lead. Kirkman’s voice had an Edwardian hue. Giguere’s could be both earnest and distant. Like ‘Enter the Young,’ ‘Cherish’ structures the group’s harmonies to slowly build, climaxing in a dramatic showpiece.
The Association could rock and they could be balladers. They could also do much within those extremes. Yester, described on the back cover of their debut as “happy-go-lucky” and destined for accounting before music took over was the group’s romantic. Alexander, described as New Age, was the group’s mystic. Bluechel Jr., described as humble, held the group’s most Californian sound. Cole, described as a job hopper as well as a philosopher, was the Association’s irreverent wit.
While these descriptions may reek of sixties-era record-label PR, they do tease out something that made the group unique. Each member could sing lead. Each, save for Cole, was a songwriter of distinction. There was a breadth that brought a richness to their albums.
On their second LP, Renaissance, released in the fall of 1966 and produced by Jerry Yester, Jim’s brother, a different group member takes the lead on the opening four tracks on side one. Side two forms a kind of unintended suite of songs (all but one were written or co-written by Alexander) on the end of relationships or that moment when an end appears to be inevitable, each commenting from a different perspective and style.
Yester’s ‘No Fair at All’ is the most memorable, the cadence of the line resolving like a pop standard. ‘Looking Glass’ and ‘Another Time, Another Place,’ both written by Alexander and both with Giguere taking the lead, are laced with the promise of a romantic partner having to leave but leaving open the possibility of returning. The former is vaguely Eastern—Alexander would soon head to India to study meditation, leaving the group for about a year and a half—and the latter has an easy jazz groove.
Alexander departed soon after Warner Bros. Brothers purchased Valiant. Replacing him was Larry Ramos who was once a part of the New Christy Minstrels. With a new label came another new producer, Bones Howe, one of the premier record men of California, a proven hitmaker with Johnny Rivers, the Mamas and the Papas, and the 5th Dimension. Howe took the promise of the Association’s first two albums and burnished their next two with a further polish, resulting in the very good Insight Out and the even better Birthday. Part of the shine comes from the reliance on session musicians—the collective retrospectively christened the Wrecking Crew—to create the backing tracks. It was not a new practice for the Association’s sessions. During Boettcher’s stint as the group’s producer, he would often use outside musicians (notably, when Jerry Yester was at the helm, he did not). The gloss of Howe’s productions, anchored by the unmistakable sounds of Hal Blaine on drums and Joe Osborn on bass punching through, were remarkably malleable, fitting snuggly with whomever he was producing. The Association were no exception.
Notable as well is that on Insight Out, outside songwriters provided more material on it than the group itself. Unlike other groups at the time: the Turtles, the Buckinghams, and Paul Revere & the Raiders immediately come to mind, which wrote their own material but went to professional tunesmiths for their singles, there is little difference in the quality of the songs the group didn’t and did write for the album. True, on something like ‘Happiness Is,’ written by Don and Dick Addrisi, the hooks are a bit more pronounced than on ‘We Love Us,’ written by Bluechel Jr., with its airy movement through the verse released endorphins of bliss, but the level of craft on both is high. ‘When Love Comes to Me,’ from Yester, joins them to form a trilogy on the rush of first love, untainted by cynicism.
The two songs Kirkman wrote for the album were particularly inventine. The opening pastiche of ‘Wasn’t It A Bit Like Now (Parallel ’23)’ cycles through a variety of moods without ever becoming derivative of what was becoming a cliché of including a dancehall number on an album. The closing ‘Requiem for the Masses,’ conceived during a white-knuckle flight in the middle of a snowstorm as an allegory of Vietnam, includes a setting of the Kyrie Eleison, a bolero lament for a fallen matador and a dirge for an English horn. Giguere’s ‘Sometime’ is a philosophical number in which the answers to life’s questions are to be found within, not without
And of course, Insight Out is bolstered by its two massive hits. ‘Never My Love,’ written by the Addrisi Brothers, doesn’t take even one chance but how the group’s harmonies cushion Kirkman and Ramos, who both sing lead, is deeply elegant. ‘Windy,’ from the pen of singer-songwriter Ruthann Friedman, is of another matter.
The knotty introduction showcases Osborn’s unique plucked-bass sound and ends with Larry Knechtel’s tactile repeat of a note on the harpsichord. Friedman’s lyrics are full of whimsy, forming a contrast to the layers of dripping imagery on ‘Along Comes Mary,’ and consist of but two verses and a bridge. Where the excitement takes hold is after a brief solo by Kirkman on flute as the second verse is repeated five times, each recitation building slightly in intensity like the Hare Krishna chant. Friedman herself joins in at that point; ‘Windy’ fades as it kicks into double time and an air of celebration (in reality, the Association had been recording their vocals all night by that point and were exhausted). It became the group’s second number-one hit.
Birthday, released in March 1968—nine months after Insight Out—is the group at its apex. The onrush of the opening ‘Come On In’ leads into an album of deeply accomplished pop with the group, once again, writing most of the songs.
Everything about the album is heightened. The Association is swinging for the fences here and the conscious effort pays off handsomely. Yester’s ‘Rose Petals, Incense and a Kitten,’ co-written by Ric McClelland, so vividly paints a portrait of a romantic moment that borders on nirvana (hear the deeply individual sound of Tommy Tedesco’s classical guitar) that it takes a moment to realize that this is a song of a more desolate present that is yearning for the past. It pairs well with Ramos’ ‘Like Always,’ co-written by Tony Ortega and Bob Alcivar. Here, the mood is fatalism—the acknowledgement that a new love will soon “slip away like always”—with a hip wink. The bridge, with its successive rises, is especially indelible.
Each song on the album is a marvel. Yester’s ‘Barefoot Gentleman’ co-written with Skip Carmel, is a hazy, primordial tale of boy meets girl. Giguere’s ‘The Time It Is Today’ continues his pondering of the questions of life from ‘Sometime.’ Bluechel Jr.’s ‘Hear in Here,’ powered by rhythmic backing vocals that triumphantly climax at the end, has a memorable chorus: ““Hear in here,” cries a voice inside / “I’ll tell you want to do and how to live your life / The changes’ll make your move / And take you where you’re goin’ on / It’s all up to you.”” ‘Time for Livin’,’ an Addrisi Brothers song, has that same message as ‘Hear in Here’ and ‘The Time It Is Today’ but expressed more superficially—essentially it implores to stop and smell the roses. It would be the group’s last top 40 hit.
Their last top 10 hit would be Kirkman’s ‘Everything That Touches You.’ A kind of a continuation of ‘Cherish,’ it finds our protagonist now having those elusive words—”you are of gracefulness, you are of happiness / you are what I would guess to be most like / what I’ve been singing of / love, love, love, love” for one gorgeous example. The song is astonishing not only in terms of the vulnerability expressed but also in how the arrangement marshalls Kirkman’s lyrics into a overflowing expression of praise for love. The coda, centered around the word “love,” grounds any naysayer, anyone feeling it may all be too much (indeed, ‘Everything That Touches You’ is an emotionally demanding listen) into dust.
It dovetails with Yester’s ‘Birthday Morning,’ again co-written by Carmel, which begins and ends with the sentiment: “God bless this morning.” That line repeats as the album concludes. It fits.
Like many groups, by the end of the sixties, the Association found themselves increasingly passé. Though the band continued to record long after Birthday was released, the quartet of albums released between 1966 and 1968 form the text arguing for their place as one of the best pop groups of the mid sixties whose accomplishments extended far beyond their hit singles. If we take bassist Brian Cole at his word, that the Association was a machine, it was one that was deeply human and with deep heart.
If you’re not yet a subscriber of ‘Listening Sessions,’ I hope you'll click the button below to subscribe and get each edition delivered straight to your inbox. I publish a long-form essay on music three times a month, every 10 days or so.
Fantastic as always, Robert! And perfect timing: I just picked up a copy of "And Then Along Comes..." this weekend.
I just devoured this. I love The Association and appreciate this very excellent breakdown of their peak albums!