P.F. Sloan (born Philip Gary Schlein, September 18, 1945, in New York) is an American pop-rock singer and songwriter. He was very successful during the mid-1960s, writing, performing and producing Billboard top 20 hits for artists such as Barry McGuire, Jan & Dean, Herman's Hermits, Johnny Rivers, The Grass Roots and the Mamas and the Papas. His folk-pop blends caused him to sometimes be referred to as "the poor man's Bob Dylan".[1]
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Sloan was born to an American father and a Romanian-born mother.[2] His family moved to West Hollywood, California in 1957, where his father, a pharmacist, changed the family surname from "Schlein" to "Sloan" after repeatedly being denied a liquor license for his store.[2] At 13, Sloan's father bought him a guitar; at the music store in Hollywood, Sloan met Elvis Presley, who gave him an impromptu music lesson.[2] In 1959, at 14, "Flip" Sloan recorded a single, "All I Want Is Loving" / "Little Girl in the Cabin," for the L.A. R&B record label Aladdin Records, which folded soon after its release.
He became part of the burgeoning Los Angeles music scene, landing a job on the songwriting staff at music publisher Screen Gems, which was then the largest publisher on the West Coast, at 16.[2] There, he formed a partnership with Steve Barri, and the duo made several attempts at recording a hit single under names such as "Philip and Stephan", the "Rally-Packs", the "WIldcats", the "Street Cleaners", "Themes Inc.", and the "Lifeguards". In 1963, they to came to the attention of Screen Gems executive Lou Adler, who decided to use them as backing singers and musicians (Sloan on lead guitar and Barri on percussion) for Jan & Dean, whom he managed. Sloan & Barri were credited on all Jan & Dean albums from Dead Man's Curve / The New Girl in School in early 1964 through Command Performance in 1965. Jan Berry used Sloan as the lead falsetto voice instead of Dean Torrence on the band's top 10 hit "The Little Old Lady from Pasadena." Around that time, Sloan and Barri also wrote their first U.S. Billboard Top 100 hit, "Kick That Little Foot Sally Ann", arranged by Jack Nitzsche and performed by a Watts, California-born artist named Round Robin. Soon they also appeared on surf records by Bruce & Terry and the Rip Chords, and they recorded their own surf singles and album as The Fantastic Baggys.
Adler then doubled their salaries to hire them for his startup publisher Trousdale Music and startup label Dunhill Records. Using the name Phil F. Sloan or P.F. Sloan (the "F" stood for "Flip," his nickname), Sloan wrote hits for many performers, including "Eve of Destruction" (Barry McGuire); "You Baby" and "Let Me Be" (The Turtles); "A Must to Avoid" and "Hold On!" (Herman's Hermits); "Take Me For What I'm Worth" (The Searchers); and "Secret Agent Man" (Johnny Rivers). This last song was the theme tune for Danger Man, a British TV series that had been given a new title (Secret Agent) and theme for the U.S. market.
Sloan also became a session guitarist as part of the group of L.A. session musicians known as the Wrecking Crew, working with such well-known backing musicians as drummer Hal Blaine, guitarist Tommy Tedesco, bassist Joe Osborn, and bassist/keyboardist Larry Knechtel, among others. While working with Barry McGuire, Sloan created and played a guitar introduction as a hook to a new song by John Phillips entitled "California Dreamin'", and the same backing track was used for the hit version by Phillips' group The Mamas & the Papas, which led to Sloan being a regular in their recording sessions.[3] Sloan generally played the lead guitar tracks on most of the songs he wrote, including the famous riff in "Secret Agent Man."
Sloan and Barri also were performers while on Dunhill. They released Dunhill's first album, a collection of surf instrumentals, as the "Rincon Surfside Band," and the album was later issued by RCA under the name "Willie and the Wheels." Sloan's successful folk-influenced songwriting caused Dunhill to record two solo albums by him. His single "Sins Of A Family" reached the Billboard top 100 in fall 1965, in the wake of the huge success of "Eve of Destruction."
During this time, Sloan & Barri continued to do session work with Jan Berry of Jan & Dean, until Jan's near-fatal car wreck in April 1966, which basically ended Jan & Dean's career. They also produced a number of other acts, from Ann-Margret to The Robbs to Canadians Terry Black and Patricia-Anne (both of whom had #1 hits in Canada with Sloan-Barri songs) to Dunhill acts such as Shelley Fabares, the Ginger Snaps featuring Dandee Duncan, the Thomas Group (headed by Danny Thomas's son Tony) and the Iguanas (a Mexican band that did not speak English).
The main Sloan-Barri recording effort for Dunhill was done under the name The Grass Roots. However, after the Grass Roots enjoyed a Billboard Top 30 single with "Where Were You When I Needed You", the band's first album failed to chart, and Dunhill forced Sloan and Barri to recruit a real band to perform as the Grass Roots. Ultimately, a second band had to be recruited after the first one quit. Sloan and Barri continued as producers for the band, and they quickly generated a U.S. top 10 hit with a cover of the European hit, "Let's Live for Today" (by the British band The Rokes). After that, though, the new Grass Roots wanted to write their own songs, and Sloan, who still wanted to be a recording artist, became alienated from both Barri and Dunhill management.
Sloan played as a solo artist at the Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival on Sunday June 11, 1967 in the "summer of love" on the final day of this celebration of pop music.[4] This music festival is important because it occurred before the Monterey Pop Festival but did not have a movie to document it for the ages (see List of electronic music festivals).
Sloan's final Dunhill release was a solo single, "I Can't Help But Wonder, Elizabeth" b/w "Karma (A Study Of Divinations)", once again released under the name Philip Sloan.
Due to its line "You're old enough to kill, but not for votin'", "Eve of Destruction" was used as a rallying cry by supporters of the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which changed the voting age from 21 to 18 as of 1971.[5]
| Year | Song | Original artist | U.S. Hot 100 | Other versions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1964 | "Kick That Little Foot Sally Ann" | Round Robin | 61 | |
| "Summer Means Fun" | Bruce & Terry | 72 | Fantastic Baggys (1964); Jan & Dean (1966) | |
| "One Piece Topless Bathing Suit" | Rip Chords | 96 | Jan & Dean (1966) | |
| "Unless You Care" | Terry Black | 99 | ||
| 1965 | "(Here They Come) From All Over the World" | Jan & Dean | 56 | |
| "I Found A Girl" | Jan & Dean | 30 | ||
| "Eve of Destruction" | Barry McGuire | 1 | The Turtles (1970 - #100); P.F. Sloan (1965); The Grass Roots (1966) | |
| "Let Me Be" | The Turtles | 28 | P.F. Sloan (1966) | |
| "Take Me For What I'm Worth" | The Searchers | 76 | P.F. Sloan (1965) | |
| "Child of Our Times" | Barry McGuire | 72 | ||
| "Sins of a Family" | P.F. Sloan | 87 | Murray the K (1965) | |
| 1966 | "A Must to Avoid" | Herman's Hermits | 8 | |
| "You Baby" | The Turtles | 20 | The Grass Roots (1966); The Mamas and the Papas (1966) | |
| "Where Were You When I Needed You" | The Grass Roots | 28 | Herman's Hermits (1966) | |
| "Secret Agent Man" | Johnny Rivers | 3 | Mel Torme (1966); The Ventures (1966 -- #54); Devo (1979), Blues Traveler (1995) | |
| "Only When You're Lonely" | The Grass Roots | 96 | ||
| "Can I Get to Know You Better" | The Turtles | 89 | ||
| 1967 | "Another Day, Another Heartache" | The Fifth Dimension | 45 | |
| "Things I Should Have Said" | The Grass Roots | 23 | ||
| "Wake Up, Wake Up" | The Grass Roots | 68 |
After leaving Dunhill, Sloan recorded an album in 1968, Measure of Pleasure, that he says was recorded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, but which listed Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee as the locale. The album, produced by Tom Dowd and released by Atco Records, was Sloan's most accomplished bit of record-making (as opposed to songwriting), but it did not sell. Beset by business and legal problems – Sloan essentially signed away the rights to his valuable compositions, and has said that Dunhill made threatening advances to force him to do so – he largely dropped out of sight in the late 1960s and did not record or perform again, save for 1972's poorly-received Raised On Records, until the 1980s. Sloan has discussed spending most of three decades battling mental and physical illnesses as a reason for his disappearance from music.[6] He made a CD in the early 1990s that was initially released only in Japan.
Finally, in 2005 Sloan made a series of recordings with producer Jon Tiven in Nashville, Tennessee. The resulting album, Sailover, was released in August 2006 on the Hightone label. Tiven, known for his work with artists such as Alex Chilton and Frank Black, played on the record, as did his wife, Sally Tiven. The record was a mixed bag of old and new songs, including several co-written by Tiven, and includes guests Frank Black, Buddy Miller, Lucinda Williams, Felix Cavaliere, Tom Petersson, and Gary Tallent.
Sloan's early work has been poorly represented on compact disc, with only a smattering of releases to his name. Measure of Pleasure was reissued on CD in January 2007. There is currently a collection of his demo recordings available (Child of Our Times), and there was a now-out-of-print 1993 "Anthology" of his Dunhill recordings.
In 2008, UK-based Ace Records did a near-definitive reissue of Sloan's solo recordings for Dunhill. Entitled Here's Where I Belong: The Best of the Dunhill Years 1965-1967, the CD omits the album tracks "When The Wind Changes" and "Patterns Seg. 4." Sloan's final Dunhill recording, "I Can't Help But Wonder, Elizabeth," made its legal CD debut on this release.
"P.F. Sloan" is also the title of a song by singer-songwriter Jimmy Webb, who is better known for the 1960s hits "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" and "Up, Up and Away". Webb released two different versions of the catchy, bittersweet composition, which seems to be about the costs and disappointments of being a creative groundbreaker. Cover versions of this were recorded by The Association in 1971, Jennifer Warnes and by British band Unicorn in the early 1970s - released as a single and album track on Transatlantic Records.
While Sloan's insistence on becoming a recording artist was an inspiration to fellow songwriter Webb, who had worked with Sloan with Bones Howe and The Fifth Dimension, a personal dispute led Webb to deny the existence of "P.F. Sloan" when asked about the song's title character during an article interview, saying that he had made the name up. Ironically, this led Eugene Landy, the controversial psychologist, to lay claim to being the real P.F. Sloan when he was asked by reporters why he considered himself able to direct Beach Boys lead singer Brian Wilson's musical career. Landy claimed to have written the songs attributed to "P.F. Sloan".
Jackson Browne performed "P.F. Sloan" with Jimmy Webb on Jimmy's 2010 album "Just Across Across The River".
| Year | Song | Label |
|---|---|---|
| 1959 | "Little Girl in the Cabin" / "All I Want Is Lovin'" |
Aladdin |
| 1960 | "If You Believe in Me" | Mart |
| 1965 | "Sins of a Family" | Dunhill |
| "Halloween Mary" | ||
| 1966 | "From a Distance" | |
| "City Women" | ||
| "A Melody for You" | ||
| 1967 | "Sunflower Sunflower" | |
| "Karma (A Study of Divinations)" / "I Can't Help But Wonder, Elizabeth" |
||
| 1969 | "New Design" | Atco |
| 1972 | "Let Me Be" | Mums |
| Year | Band Name | Song | Label |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1964 | Themes Inc. | "Theme from Peyton Place (Allison's Theme)" | Vee Jay |
| Phillip and Stephan | "When You're So Near You're So Far Away" / "Meet Me Tonight Little Girl" | Interphon | |
| Sheridan Hollenbeck | "Tokyo Melody" | ||
| Wildcats | "The Swim" | Counsel | |
| Lifeguards | "Swimtime USA" | Reprise | |
| Street Cleaners | "That's Cool, That's Trash" | Amy | |
| Rally-Packs | "Move Out, Little Mustang" | Imperial | |
| Fantastic Baggies | "Tell 'Em I'm Surfin'" | ||
| "Anywhere the Girls Are" | |||
| 1965 | Fantastic Baggies | "It Was I" | |
| Willie and the Wheels | "Skateboard Craze" | Dunhill | |
| Grass Roots | "Mr. Jones (Ballad of a Thin Man)" | ||
| 1966 | Grass Roots | "Where Were You When I Needed You" | |
| "Only When You're Lonely" | |||
| "Tip of My Tongue" |