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Tom Northcott


Tom Northcott - Sunny Goodge Street / Who Planted Thorns In Miss Alice's Garden - 7

Sunny Goodge Street / Who Planted Thorns In Miss Alice's Garden - 7"
New Syndrome - 1967


Michael Panontin
'Sunny Goodge Street', Donovan's jazz-tinged ode to the magical pleasures of weed, was first issued in October 1965 on his Fairytale LP. The world took note almost immediately. Just a few months later, Dutch singer Boudewijn de Groot had already translated it and sung it on TV. Marianne Faithful and Judy Collins both recorded their own versions of the song the following year. Faithful's came out in April '66 on her North Country Maid LP, while Collins' more upbeat take on it appeared that November on her In My Life set.

The song, a reference to Goodge Street Station, a Tube stop in the Fitzrovia district of London where Donovan would score hash, also drew the attention of the London police force. The UK's Dangerous Drugs Act had been passed just the year before and who better to arrest than a pot-smoking Scot whose records were all the rage with the kids.

"Poetry was very important. So when you actually studied the blues and jazz, you noticed that smoking grass is a big part of it," he would tell the Songfacts site years later. "I was the first to actually mention it in a song, and that's why I would be the first to be busted in London."

Meanwhile in Vancouver, Tom Northcott was enjoying some success with two singles he had released with his Tom Northcott Trio, 1965's 'Just Don't' and the following year's 'Going Down'. Both reached the top 20 locally, and so the group decided to travel from their home in Vancouver to California, where it was all happening. They managed to land high-profile support slots for the Who, the Doors and the Jefferson Airplane, and it was just a matter of time before they were 'discovered'.

The Trio had opened for the Jefferson Airplane in Vancouver. The Airplane liked them, and booked them to play at the Matrix, where the San Francisco group were essentially the house band. "That led to the thing with Warner Bros," Northcott explained to radio station WCMR. "Tom Donahue, who was the father of FM radio, came down to the club and said, 'Gee, Lenny Waronker has been trying to get in touch with you. Would you go down to L.A. to meet with him?' Donahue gave me an airplane ticket and $200 US to fly to Los Angeles and Karl Scott, who was managing the Beau Brummels at that time, picked me up at the airport, and that's how I ended up at Warner Bros."

The first song Northcott recorded for Warner Bros. was 'Sunny Goodge Street'. He had heard Collins' version and liked it. As did Waronker. "He thought Leon Russell would be a good guy to co-produce me with, and Leon did the arrangements. We cut the basic tracks in a little recording studio in Capitol Tower in LA. Glen Campbell on guitar. I think Larry Knechtel played bass. James Burton played on it. The drummer was Jim Gordon."

The next step was to take the song over to Western United Recorders in Hollywood to do the vocal overdubs. "It was a one-take vocal. Then they wanted to have an echo on a background vocal, and they couldn't get enough echo by the usual method, so I got long headphone cords and actually went and sang in the echo chamber. It was a matter of positioning me in the right place in the echo chamber and then they got the right take on me."

'Sunny Goodge Street' - a squeaky clean version with Donovan's original drug references taken out - was issued in the late spring of '67. Canada at the time was in thrall to its own youthful innocence - literally, with hordes of baby boomers just coming of age, and symbolically, with centennial celebrations taking place across the nation - and those blithe colourful arrangements proved to be just the thing. 'Sunny Goodge Street' entered the charts in early July and by August it had soared to an almost unfathomable #1 position on Vancouver's CKLG. What's more, it managed to do well in parts of the US as well, scoring #9 and #10 slots in San Jose and San Francisco, respectively.

At first, Northcott admits, he didn't really like what Waronker had done to his song.

"Lenny Waronker added a steam calliope. And the steam calliope was out of tune with the track so they had to wrap some splicing tape around the capstan of the recording machine so that it was speeded up enough and roughly in tune with the steam calliope. And they also brought in accordion, mandolin, and the other colour stuff that is on there. And then they sent it up to me, and when I first heard it, I hated it. I thought, 'What have they done to me? I'm a rock 'n' roll band. What happened to the Tom Northcott Trio, you know?' I really felt crushed. Then I listened to it a few times, and I started to like it. I talked to Lenny, I was very diplomatic. We talked and he said he heard my voice being with these bright colorful instruments. I think to a large extent he was right."

These days, Northcott's memories are much fonder. "I was in San Francisco, it was the summer of love, my record 'Sunny Goodge Street' was released and within twenty-four hours it was the #1 requested song on the #1 radio station in San Francisco and remained there for days which stretched out into weeks."
         
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