His mother Nechema was a Polish-born schoolteacher who specialized in Yiddish history and language, and during summers she and Avrom would send their only child to Camp Naivelt, a left-wing secular Jewish camp in Brampton, Ontario, where his endless mischief was the constant talk of the counselors. ‘Zal!’ is an oral history of Lovin’ Spoonful co-founder Zal Yanovsky. Wordsworth, an ardent Lovin’ Spoonful fan who has co-written two previous books on the band, draws upon both archival and recent interviews with many of the people who lived, loved, worked, played and otherwise crossed paths with Yanovsky - in his early life as well as in the music and culinary worlds - along with a veritable feast of photos spanning his life and career. Written by Simon Wordsworth, and featuring a foreword from Yanovsky’s daughter Zoe, “Zal! An Oral History of Zalman Yanovsky” pieces together his wild and whimsical existence from the multicolored shards he left in his wake. But nearly 20 years after his death, a biography finally has finally arrived to give us a clearer idea of what Zal Yanovsky was all about. Thus, even though he’d become a well-known and deeply beloved figure in Kingston - thanks to his restaurant Chez Piggy, its associated bakery Pan Chancho, and his involvement in various local causes - Yanovsky was still something of an enigma when he died from a heart attack in December 2002 at the age of 57. musical icons like Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett and Sly Stone.Īn inveterate shtickmeister, Yanovsky rarely gave straight answers to interview questions in his Spoonful days, and the bitterness he carried with him over his experiences in the music business caused him to prevaricate or clam up entirely whenever he was asked about the band in his later years. Yanovsky’s impulsive rejection of fame and fortune turned him into something of a cult hero, but his unexpected reemergence as a restaurateur and philanthropist in Kingston, Ontario gave his story a much different (and ultimately far more uplifting) trajectory than that of other M.I.A. His penchant for mayhem would have impressed Keith Moon - he once terrorized some unsuspecting background singers by rolling a fake hand grenade into their recording session - and had a mortifying tendency to act out in crowd situations, like the time he almost ruined the Spoonful’s London after-party by pelting John Lennon with olives.įollowing a self-inflicted ejection from the band in the summer of 1967, he recorded one hilariously self-indulgent and deeply uncommercial album (“Alive and Well in Argentina”) before all but vanishing from the music business. Unfortunately, Yanovsky’s personality was as mercurial as his playing. They appeared in and provided the soundtrack for Woody Allen’s “What’s Up, Tiger Lily?” while also soundtracking Francis Ford Coppola’s “You’re a Big Boy Now,” and they were nearly cast as the leads of the TV show that turned out to be “The Monkees.” But due to fatigue, infighting, artistic differences, business hassles and an unfortunate brush with the law, the band flamed out after a chart run of barely two years.įrom left: Zal Yanovsky, John Sebastian, Steve Boone (standing), and drummer Joe Butler. When the Spoonful arrived in London in April 1966, The Beatles, Brian Jones and Jeff Beck were among the legendary British musicians who greeted them as peers. Their self-described “good time music” - a sunny, electrified, groundbreaking mutation of jug band, folk, country, blues and rock ‘n’ roll idioms - inspired and influenced such contemporary luminaries as The Kinks, Cream and the Grateful Dead. ![]() Despite their seven Top 10 hits - including 1966’s chart-topping hot pavement anthem “Summer in the City” - and their (belated) induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Lovin’ Spoonful are all too often left out of the “great American bands of the 1960s” conversation.ĭuring their musical and commercial peak, the Greenwich Village-formed quartet were an absolute phenomenon.
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