THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
Gandalf — The Turtles’ “Me About You” Comes Out of Its Shell
Gandalf — “Me About You”
A dreamy, phantasmagorical, and totally psyched-out version of “Me About You” (a demo offered to them by Gary Bonner and Alan Gordon of the Magicians), which was later a failed single for the Turtles, reaching #105 in ’70.
As to Gandalf’s lone album, Emilie Friedlander suggests that:
[W]hat they left behind is probably one of the most visionary cover albums in the history of pop. . . . “visionary” in the sense of re-investment, as though these songs — songs we’ve already heard a hundred times before — had suddenly become re-possessed by the ghosts of their true authors. . . . Gandalf is one of those albums that has an almost synesthetic effect on its listeners, filling every room which it’s played with a kind of heavy, perfumed fog. Peter Sando’s wind-kissed, reverb-dripping tenor is perhaps most responsible for this effect. . . . Gandalf is one sexy record. Fuzz guitar, Hammond B3, electric sitar, vibraphone, and chunky, equally reverb-saturated bass ground Sando’s voice in a kind of clipped, baroque accompaniment, voluptuous in its restraint. . . .
As to Gandalf’s origins, Friedlander explains:
[It] one of those garage line-ups that first saw the light of day in a high school detention hall, when guitarist Peter Sando met bassist Bob Muller in 1958. . . . The Rahgoos[‘]* home was the Night Owl, a cramped storefront-turned-mythic-rock-cafe where the likes of John Sebastian and his Lovin’ Spoonful and The Blues Magoos packed in to watch acoustic sets by James Taylor and The Flying Machine. . . .
Psychedelicized continues the story:
The [Rahgoos]. . . became staples on the New York City/Jersey Shore club circuit . . . . appear[ing] at various New York clubs throughout the ’60’s; such as “The Phone Booth”, Scott Muni’s “Rolling Stone”, “The Electric Circus”, Murray the K’s “World”, and the legendary “Night Owl Cafe” in Greenwich Village. It was there that they met songwriters Garry Bonner and Alan Gordon who brought the band to the attention of record producers Koppelman & Rubin. K&R signed the band and immediately started work on an album for their newly formed “Hot Biscuit Disc Company” label which was distributed through Capitol. K&R suggested various name changes which did not sit well with the group. However, they ultimately decided to forfeit their name and local fan recognition to appease K&R. During a gig at the “Rolling Stone”, drummer Davey Bauer was passing the time reading Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” while the rest of the band went through the ritual of brainstorming a band name. Davey chimed in, “How about “GANDALF AND THE WIZARDS”. Gandalf stuck. The album project was delayed after the Hot Biscuit label distribution deal with Capitol fell apart. In the interim, the band lost faith and also dissolved. Subsequently, K&R and Capitol parted ways with the agreement that two more LP’s would be released on the Capitol label, and GANDALF was one of them. It was finally released in early 1969, but without a band to support the collection, there was no incentive for Capitol to promote the album.
As Mike Stax’ explains in the liner notes to the CD reissue of Gandalf, “[s]till billed as the Rahgoos, the group continued to play gigs in New Jersey, but as the weeks of waiting dragged into months they were becoming more and more disillusioned. A rift developed and [they] split up before the end of 1968. . . . Capitol did little to push the album . . . and with no band around to promote it the record quickly faded from sight, becoming one of the rarest major label psychedelic releases . . . .” Peter Sando reflects that by that time “[w]e had already become disillusioned by then and were no longer together. Upon release it got a flurry of FM radio airplay, but fizzled fast and disappointed, I wrote it off as a failure at the time.”
* “All that was needed was a new, more ‘with it’ name. Bob suggested Ragu, after the tomato sauce. Peter modified the spelling and they became The Rahgoos. . . .” (liner notes to the CD reissue of Gandalf) . . . .
Here are the Turtles:
