Picture this, the year is 2008 and a 14 year old me comes back home from another boring day of secondary school in a humdrum small town full of conservatives. Of course being a mixed race bisexual kid, I didn’t fit in at all. Teenage me needed a bit of escapism and a memory suddenly pops into my head, seeing a VHS of Austin Powers, and I decided maybe I should watch Austin Powers. I’m a big fan of Shrek and watching the first two Shrek movies was a big part of my childhood. I always thought Mike Myers is really funny, so I gave it a watch. And that movie changed my entire life and ultimately put me on a path that led to the existence of this blog (more on that story here, and part one of that post here). Movies were the way I’d escape because I couldn’t drive and where I was living, it wasn’t exactly walkable like it is in England where I live now. These days I can just walk 10 minutes and there’s the park. Not so in many parts of America.
If you’ve ever watched Austin Powers you know the opening scene where Austin and Mrs Kensington drive to the Electric Psychedelic Pussycat Swingers Club and The Strawberry Alarm Clock’s “Incense and Peppermints” is playing. When I first heard that song, it was like my brain chemistry had changed instantly and I was like wow the 60s are the coolest decade ever, I need more 60s in my life. I included it on my list of Gateway Songs that got me into classic rock. The colourful aesthetic, the dandyish clothes (unlike a lot of girls, I wanted to dress more like Austin, not like Vanessa or Felicity), the groovy music, the rebellious and free-spirited nature. Even if aesthetically I’m more eclectic these days, my spirit is still very much grounded in the 60s.
When I got the opportunity to interview the Strawberry Alarm Clock, it was a dream come true. Like 14 year old me never imagined that I would later be sitting down and interviewing the band that made the song that changed my life. When I told my friends about the band, they were like wait they made ‘The Sixties Song’ (“Incense and Peppermints”), the song that signifies that it’s the 60s.
The Strawberry Alarm Clock are a recent new signing to Big Stir Records and they have a new single out called “Monsters” b/w “White Light” and it sounds great. Autumn is my favourite season and I love spooky aesthetics and psychedelia and “Monsters” perfectly combines the two. “White Light” has more of a prog/jazz fusion sound and you’ll see in the interview how these genres are kind of related. Makes sense because a lot of prog rock bands started off psychedelic, like Yes (Steve Howe was in Tomorrow and Bodast, a lot of the original members were in Mabel Greer’s Toyshop) and Gentle Giant (the Shulman brothers were formerly in Simon Dupree and the Big Sound).
You’re in for a real treat today because we’ll be talking about the band’s journey to #1 and their reunion. We’re really lucky to have the Strawberry Alarm Clock with us on the blog:
Angie Moon: How did you get into rock music?
Randy Seol: Just listening to the radio, I imagine.
Steve Bartek: My older brother had Elvis Presley records that I would listen to when I was 5-6. It was there. It was a good counterbalance to the polkas that my parents would listen to. Actually playing in a rock band, I would have to attribute to my older brother. My older brother started playing guitar and was playing with friends and I just snuck into his room and played guitar and ended up playing in a band with him.
Mark Weitz: If you want to go back to the very beginning, what interested me in music, period. It’s an off-take of what you asked me there, but it was Liberace I saw on TV when I was 7 years old.
Steve Bartek: Wow! (laughs)
Mark Weitz: It was 1952 and I told my mom I wanted to do that. She goes, “What, honey?” And I said that. She looks at the TV and he’s playing piano.
Steve Bartek: Was it the playing or the costumes?
Mark Weitz: No, it was the sound of the piano. Everything up to that point was violins and I really hadn’t heard much music and that’s what piqued my interest in playing piano and then from then on I had lessons until I was 16. It’s funny that Steve mentioned Elvis Presley. The first record I ever bought was “All Shook Up” by Elvis Presley and I played that song over and over again. It just occurred to me that Steve just mentioned that. It’s one of the early things and then when I was in college there were a couple of guys who played guitar and said hey, why don’t we get a little group together and play at our fraternity parties and so before you know it, I bought an electric piano and one of the first ones that was made by Hohner and that was kind of the beginning.
Angie Moon: What makes psychedelic rock special to you?
Randy Seol: The freedom for me. There’s not too many locked in things that you have to do. It’s very free like jazz, but in a rock and roll state.
Mark Weitz: We were kind of, I guess, an experimental rock and roll band moving from prior to the Strawberry Alarm Clock, Thee Sixpence, which Gene [Gunnels] was the original drummer and I joined and the band originated doing a lot of cover songs, English rock, so on and so forth and it kind of acquiesced into when I wrote “Incense and Peppermints”, the music along with Ed King, it kind of acquiesced into an experimental phase at that point and everybody started listening to the San Francisco Sound and things like that when we were getting influenced by quite a few different groups and our own individual chemistry, and we each started coming up with songs, Steve Bartek and George Bunnell were a writing team, they were neighbours, very young, and they were writing songs that would end up on our first album, which were good songs and the songs were totally different from other groups. We didn’t really use a group to copy our sound by. We kind of developed our own sound with everybody’s contribution from the background they had, [that’s how] we ended up with the sound of The Strawberry Alarm Clock. To this day we try to maintain that by allowing ourselves to tap back into that 60s kind of feelings that we had back then. People say, well how do you get your sound? I always say it’s the sum total of everybody’s experiences kind of thrown in the pot and you stir it up and that’s what comes out.
Angie Moon: What was it like recording “Incense and Peppermints?”
Gene Gunnels: There was Ed King on guitar and bass, Mark Weitz on keyboard, and myself playing drums. We actually recorded that as an instrumental without words at the beginning, it was originally going to be the flip side of another song and it was amazing. It was fun! I can see now the visual of three us in the studio recording it. It was fantastic.
Mark Weitz: We did it pretty basically. We recorded drums and rhythm guitar and I think I played first time around was my Farfisa compact organ and then we came back and I overdubbed piano, played the same thing on the grand piano that I played on the organ and we kind of layered it to get a mix and then Ed King came in and did his famous lead guitar solo on top of that and then we finished the track and it was just an instrumental like Gene said and anyway long story short, we got the lyrics later and went back into the studio and there’s more to the story, it goes on for a while. It was a long and winding road for the song to be completed. Randy Seol was brought in, I remember, through our manager to teach us some harmonies and Randy was instrumental in doing that and then I think at that time, if I’m not mistaken, Howard Davis came in then.
Randy Seol: He was my vocal coach and he goes these guys are really having trouble (laughs).
Mark Weitz: And he got us into the four-part, and sometimes five-part harmony like the “sha-la-la’s” at the end of the song and we went in and recorded the background vocals and we didn’t really have, every one of us stepped up to the mic and tried to sing the lead vocal and we went around the room and everybody that wanted to try it went ahead and took a stab at it and none of us really sounded that great on the lead vocal track so there was a 16 or 17-year-old friend of our manager’s sitting as a guest on the floor. Long-haired guy, we didn’t really know him, his name was Greg Munford and somebody said, “Hey Greg, ‘Why don’t you get up there and try singing this,’ because he had his own band and he was starting his own band and so we ran the track and Greg sang the lead vocal and he sounded the best at it and we kept it and to this day Greg’s voice is on “Incense and Peppermints”. We asked him if he wanted to join the band and he goes, no that’s okay I have my own band that i’m starting. Of course the record went to #1 and it took us a long time, it took us six months from when we first started promoting it till we got it up the charts luckily. A lot of hard work!
George Bunnell: We actually just re-recorded “Incense and Peppermints”, not just, we did it in 2017 with Ed King and Greg Munford and all of us and so we have it in the can and I’m not sure if it’s going to end up on our new album or not, but we’re all on it and it might require going to Steve, our producer and have Steve see what we could do with it, but we have the tracks and I think that would behove us to do it and Greg Munford is still a friend of ours after all these years. So was Ed King of course, and funny thing with Ed King, when he did his guitar part, guitar solo in it, he didn’t want to use his fuzz tone that he had. He actually had the original stuff, but since his days with Lynyrd Skynyrd and being roots, and historically he was a roots kind of guitar player, they don’t use gizmos for sound on their guitars. So he refused to use fuzz tone, but anyway he said, ‘Why would I want to ruin the sound of a $250,000 guitar?’ Which, I get it. It would have been kind of fun to have that, his Maestro Fuzz Tone or whatever it was, but anyway he used kind of distortion on it, he over-volumed it and it sounds good. We have that!
Gene Gunnels: There might be some question about the two drummers in the band? When “Incense and Peppermints” was recorded, when the vocals were put on, I quit. I’d recorded the basic track and then I quit because I didn’t. (Off-screen: tell her the story! It’s the girlfriend story!) No, no no, it’s part of it. Then Randy joined the band and he was a vocal coach for the vocals on it and he recorded probably all of the songs on the album except for “Incense and Peppermints” and then years later we regrouped and I rejoined the band with Randy, and there’s two drummers and we’re both considered original drummers because we’re both on the original album. And when he quit in 1968, I rejoined the band as a single drummer with Ed King and Mark Weitz and Lee Freeman.
Angie Moon: That song gave you a lot of opportunities and I know it was used in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and you appeared in the film, can you talk about that?
Gene Gunnels: Talk about Beyond the Valley of the Dolls? I don’t know how much I can say about that. At that point it was Lee Freeman, Ed King, and another addition to the band at that point was Paul Marshall and there’s not too much I can remember about that except that we were just asked to be in the film. Go ahead, Mark.
Mark Weitz: Well, I was just trying to remember myself, I had left the band just prior to shooting that movie, I think it was 1970. Roger Ebert, the movie critic, wrote the screenplay and he had asked the band to perform in the movie.
George Bunnell: He wrote the band into the script. In his original script it was The Strawberry Alarm Clock plays at a party. I have something, I have show and tell.
Mark Weitz: Ed King, Lee Freeman, and Gene Gunnels, Paul Marshall, which was a new member, guitar player and songwriter, that came in and they performed. I guess it was a four piece band.
Gene Gunnels: We played the party scene in the movie. Took a long time.
George Bunnell: This is the Roger Ebert thumb…
Mark Weitz: The one that we were supposed to pass around six months to each member of the band.
George Bunnell: Yeah, and I ended up with it.
Mark Weitz: And we only had one of them.
George Bunnell: Right! I sent it to Ed and then he sent it back. It says “Strawberry Alarm Clock: Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival 2007”.
Mark Weitz: Right, Roger Ebert was kind of instrumental in putting the band together again.
Howie Anderson: Right.
Mark Weitz: There was a Forgotten Film Festival in Champaign, Illinois?
George Bunnell: Yeah, that’s what I said.
Mark Weitz: Overlooked Film Festival. On the third day of the three day festival, he said it would be great to have the Strawberry Alarm Clock on stage here at the theatre and perform. He was suffering from some extreme throat cancer that was basically killing him and as part of a request, make a wish thing, we all travelled.
Gene Gunnels: There was everybody there.
Mark Weitz: Everyone was there and we rehearsed and we got back together and we played a set.
George Bunnell: It was a nine piece.
Gene Gunnels: Anyway, the scene was that it was going to show the movie on the screen, and we were set up behind the screen and when the movie was over, they’d raise the screen and we would perform.
Mark Weitz: Yeah and then that was, at the time, I guess George was reassembling the group again and that’s when I rejoined back in and Steve Bartek and Gene and Howie Anderson and Randy Seol.
Gene Gunnels: Ed, Paul, Lee, everybody was there.
Mark Weitz: Everybody that was in the band.
George Bunnell: Almost everybody, not Jim Pitman.
Mark Weitz: Jim Pitman somehow, I don’t know what happened on that, but we all showed up and there were nine of us on stage. So ever since then we’ve been back together again and we’re finally, after since 2007, this is our second album that we’ve just completed and we’ll be releasing at the end of February, new songs. Thanks to our leader Steve Bartek there. which has been co-producing and producing at the studio, he really knows the band, all the nuances, he is mixing a lot of our tracks and getting them in tip-top shape Strawberry Alarm Clock style.
Angie Moon: I got into the 60s because of “Incense and Peppermints” being used in the Austin Powers films, what’s the story of the song getting into Austin Powers, how did you feel about it being used in the film and the 60s revival that resulted in the 90s?
George Bunnell: I have a question back to you about Austin Powers, it’s kind of an American-Canadian kind of thing, did it go to England in particular? Did they accept it, because it was presented in a British way.
Angie Moon: People definitely know it here. I think they find it funny, definitely amusing.
George Bunnell: It was really funny.
Gene Gunnels: The whole movie was funny.
George Bunnell: We [“Incense and Peppermints”] were in the beginning of it [the first film International Man of Mystery].
Mart Weitz: Anytime anyone could use that song, in any movie, we’re always excited to see that.
George Bunnell: Especially the scene where Austin Powers goes that’s not a woman, hits her, knocks her in, and goes it’s a man, baby! And the song starts, perfect!
Gene Gunnels: It’s my happening and it freaks me out!
George Bunnell: That’s a different movie.
Angie Moon: They referenced it [Beyond the Valley of the Dolls], yeah.
George Bunnell: They did reference it! Back to that Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Gene, didn’t you film it at the Troubadour?
Gene Gunnels: No, it was on a set at the film studio.
George Bunnell: Oh, it was. Somebody had told me once it was the Troubadour, I think it was Lee, but then you know, that sounds like Lee.
Mark Weitz: Anytime that “Incense and Peppermints” is used, especially with the connotation connected to psychedelic music of the 60s and being an iconic, quintessential song of the 60s psychedelic [era], we feel very honoured to have that tag put on us because you know, it’s quite a legacy for the band.
Angie Moon: There’s so many great songs that came out in that era, so it’s like this is the one. Another standout song for me was “Sit With The Guru” with its sitar. Can you tell me a bit about the inclusion of the sitar?
George Bunnell: You know what, Coral, the company Coral electric sitars [part of Danelectro], they gave Ed a Coral electric sitar and he felt compelled to use it even though he was diametrically opposed to it, but he did use it and I thought it was perfect in the song and it really rang out. It had a really cool sound to it and they’re still kind of the go-to electric sitar I think. I don’t know, Steve would know better, same with Howie, they both have electric sitars. I don’t know if yours are the same as what Ed used.
Steve Bartek: Mine was the imitation from back then, it was the Danelectro, the cheaper version of what the Coral was. The Coral was still the main one that people seek out. They’re not made anymore. Jerry Jones makes a really good one.
Howie Anderson: I have the one with the sympathetic strings. They’re great! They’re fun.
Mark Weitz: We were getting into transcendental meditation on the Beach Boys tour and I’m not going to open that can of worms yet, I think what happened was on “Sit With The Guru” the lyrics were written by Roy Freeman, no connection to Lee Freeman, just ironic that’s his last name. But one of the staff lyric writers for Uni Records.
George Bunnell: No, you know who he was? He was Joey Bishop’s comedy writer.
Mark Weitz: I never understood, he wrote the lyrics for “Sit With The Guru”. I wrote the track I think, I can’t remember if Lee was in on that.
George Bunnell: Just you and Ed wrote the music.
Mark Weitz: And Roy Freeman wrote the lyrics. Unfortunately we can’t take the credit for writing “meditation, high high where eagles fly, leave today untouched in the sky”. Those were lyrics that were given to us and we went in the studio and recorded it and it came out pretty good. I was pretty happy with the track.
Steve Bartek: Who sang that?
George Bunnell: Randy sang it.
Randy Seol: With the band.
George Bunnell: You were singing lead.
Mark Weitz: It was one of the few songs where the electric sitar was pronounced and introduced. There were a few other songs that had it on the charts, but I think it really helped identify that song, the electric sitar.
Angie Moon: You say you were touring with the Beach Boys around their transcendental days. Was that near the time of Charles Manson?
Randy Seol: Exactly.
George Bunnell: It was a little before that, but not much.
Randy Seol: Manson was living at Dennis’ house.
George Bunnell: He was after we toured with them though. Not when we were. The Manson thing was 1969, it might have been at the end of ’68, but by that time Randy and I had already quit the Alarm Clock and we were in another band we actually used to go to this place called the Fountain of the World in a place called Box Canyon in Chatsworth. It was kind of like a burned out building that had some nuns that used to live in it and we used to go there and recite poetry and Charles Manson was like the guy that organised everything and got everybody to get up and read a poem and so we used to go there and do it. Isn’t that odd? But it was before any of this crazy stuff or anything we knew about. That was in late ’68 I think, we used to go there. We had a band called Buffington Rhodes that was me and Steve and Randy right after Strawberry Alarm Clock. We quit.
Angie Moon: Did you suspect anything when you saw Charles Manson?
George Bunnell: No, no, no. He was just some goofy hippie guy. He was an old guy. We were all 18-19 years old and so he was older. He was like an older guy. He was probably 30 already [author’s note: he was a few years into his 30s by that point]. And with a beard and everything and long hair, but it wasn’t weird and it wasn’t some orgy scene or anything either. It was just dark because it was candlelit and it was at night and we were in Box Canyon, which is kind of just creepy without Charles Manson in it, but it’s like those were weird days. But yeah the Maharishi went on tour with the Beach Boys right after we were done touring with them, but when we were touring with them, it was somebody who had worked for the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and her name was Mother Olson and so she was on tour with us and would have sessions where we would meditate together with Buffalo Springfield and the Beach Boys and they would have all kinds of flowers and everything and bring them to us. There’s pictures of us where we’re holding flowers with Mother Olson.
Mark Weitz: Hey George, let me interject something. Before we go on stage to do our show, Buffalo Springfield, the Beach Boys, and the Strawberry Alarm Clock would go into what they call the quiet room. If one was available we’d sit in a circle and we would meditate for 10 minutes and we would all kind of join hands and we would go on stage and do a show. It was very very cool.
George Bunnell and Howie Anderson: Hippie like!
Mark Weitz: That’s how we got kind of indoctrinated into transcendental meditation and we actually joined, we had to give a donation.
George Bunnell: We had to pay a lot of money.
Mark Weitz: We were given a mantra so that we can do TM on our own and to this day I still use it when I need to relax. Transcendental meditation is real, it’s something that stays with you and we were exposed to it on that Beach Boys tour and I think it changed us a little bit. We saw a side of life that we had never seen. It opened up the spirituality part of Eastern religions and things like that.
Angie Moon: You’re the latest Big Stir signing, can you tell me how that came about?
George Bunnell: I got acquainted with a really cool guy named Daniel Coston and he’s a photographer and producer. He was producing a band called The Cyrkle. Anyway he and I had been communicating a lot. I loved the band The Cyrkle, they were one of my faves, you know. I was asking questions, we were back and forth online. And then somehow or another, he brought up the Big Stir Records thing and I think it had to do with our song. I started sending him a couple of our tracks and he was like totally into them. He was going, oh my god this stuff’s great. And I sent him “Monsters”, my friends are Rex Broome and Christina [Bulbenko] and they’re doing a Halloween album and they own a record company and he said I think maybe they would love to have this included in it. I don’t know if there’s any more room, they’ve already got all the other songs recorded. And so I said, okay well check it out and so he sent them “Monsters” and another song Randy wrote called “White Light”, which is another Halloweenish kind of a thing too about seeing a white light and you die. Anyway, they loved it and they said we want you. This would be a cornerstone of the album and we would close the album with it and all of this. And I thought, wow, okay cool. That’s how it started and then they said would you guys like to release it as a separate single from the album and then possible do a whole album? I said, well we’re almost 3/4 of the way through our new album and so they asked to hear stuff and I sent them stuff. I sent them the ones that we have completed and they flipped out, they loved it all. They said oh my god, we want this! So they sent us contracts and that was that. We signed up and they’re the nicest people and everything is the way we want things to go as far as artists first kind of a thing. They’re artists themselves [read my interview with Rex & Christina here]. And so it’s a really perfect kind of a union between us. It’s really nice.
Angie: How do you think the music industry has changed from the 60s to today?
George Bunnell: Well, in the 60s there were bands and mostly bands that were helmed by guys and at some point it changed over to there became a lot of females and then that thing went further and further and further to where the females have taken over the world (laughs). You know, Beyonce and Taylor Swift and those people. Nobody ever got that big as far as guys. Not even Elvis or anybody, so they might be as famous, but they never made a billion dollars. So that part has changed and it went from music that was created by a group of people to music that is created by songwriters giving songs to people or in the case of Taylor Swift and those people, they write their own songs, but it’s solo stuff basically. They’re solo acts, but they have bands backing them up. The music has shifted, it’s not like a band, you know, trying to present itself as a band where everybody has an equal force. It’s more focused on one person and I think that’s the biggest difference. Because if you look around there’s not a whole lot of bands. They’re there and they can, I mean Oasis just did their comeback and it’s pretty big you know, but they don’t have anything really that is substantial as far as really great creative music like The Beatles did and stuff.
Randy Seol: I really think there’s a circle going on, “Incense and Peppermints” and our struggles in the beginning, we did a lot of underground stations and stuff and because now there are so many underground streaming stations that aren’t dependent on someone telling them what to play that as long as they hear about us and they enjoy the material, we’re going to get a lot more airplay. That’s how we got our beginning airplay too. So to me it’s really changed into a streaming business, but at the same time there is a real collectors, the vinyl radio stations and stuff, there’s a resurgence of you don’t need the big boys to make it happen. Just like in those days too. You could do a lot on your own and you can create a business. As different as it is, to me I feel it’s like a resurgence, you don’t have to depend on the music programmers for our song to get played.
George Bunnell: Angie, I like all your questions, they’re really cool.
Mark Weitz: I want to add one thing that I think fits in with this. I think the younger people, like for instance George was mentioning that when we played at the Whisky A Go-Go on Sunset Strip in Hollywood, that our audience are surprisingly in their late teens and early 20s, holding their 1967 album up for us to sign and actually mouthing the words in the first couple of rows off the stage when we’re playing. They know the lyrics of the songs. I think the younger people especially interested in music and rock and roll and the roots of how this all started in the 60s, a big resurgence of younger people really wanting to get back to how everything started and the bands back then like The Doors and quite a few, especially the local groups here in Los Angeles, there’s quite still a huge interest in the early bands that pretty much came out of Hollywood and this area of California and so that’s helping the movement so to speak, the psychedelic movement. Even though we never considered tagging ourselves as a psychedelic band, that was given to us. We just, a lot of our songs are, they’re all different. If you play albums, every cut doesn’t sound like the same type of instrumentation. We try to vary, we weed through the songs and select ones that any of our members of the band bring, we listen to it and sometimes we can make something out of it and sometimes we can’t, so we try to stick to a democratic way of running the band. We don’t really have a leader and we try. Some bands are told what to do and in our band and we have tried to maintain a democratic process on music selection and things like that. So when we go and play and see the younger people we know that maybe all that hard work has paid off. The way that we kinda materialised from just our group effort.
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