Flamin' Groovies and Roy Loney

The Flamin' Groovies were formed in 1965 in San Francisco by vocalist Roy Loney and guitarist Cyril Jordan. They played rhythm and blues and Mersey-beat covers, and in many ways followed the trail of fellow citizens Beau Brummels. They were obliterated by the hippie movement and by the boom of acid-rock. They represented the old world of catchy melodies, stupid lyrics and inept musicians in an age that was rapidly evolving towards lengthy jams, militant lyrics and virtuoso playing. The band self-produced their debut EP, Sneakers (1968), which is really their main claim to fame (because it predates independent labels). The songs (all but one composed by Loney) range from fuzzed-out garage-rock (The Slide, Golden Clouds) to raw rock and roll (Babes In The Sky, My Yada). Their first official album, SuperSnazz (Epic, 1969) contains a few catchy songs (Laurie Did It, Love Have Mercy, The First One's Free) but as derivative of the 1960s as possible. All in all, the band fares better with the four covers. It is probably the most over-rated record of the era.

Flamingo (Kama Sutra, 1970) is, on the other hand, an effective display of virulent rock and roll (the epileptic Roadhouse, the acrobatic Second Cousin, the martial Headin' For The Texas Border). Finally, Flamin' Groovies sound like a band, not just a photocopy.

Teenage Head (Kama Sutra, 1971) turned, instead, to blues-rock (Teenage Head, Doctor Boogie), stealing riffs and licks from the books of Robert Johnson and John Lee Hooker, while winking at rockabilly (Evil Hearted Ada), folk-rock (Whiskey Woman, that Bob Dylan copied in Knocking On Heaven's Door). More than anything else, this album is a tribute to the Rolling Stones: High Flyin' Baby, City Lights, Yesterday Numbers. This remains their best album. By adapting the rebellious spirit of rock and roll to the 1970s, these albums defined ante-litteram the spirit of punk-rock.
By this album, Loney had become the main songwriter. It was therefore surprising that, after the single Slow Death (1972), one of rock's great drug requiems, he left the band.

In the meantime Jordan led the Flamin' Groovies to record Shake Some Action (Sire, 1976), one of the albums that rode the wave of the Sixties revival. It is a shameless imitation of the early 1960s British bands (Beatles, Kinks, and assorted Mersey-beat one-hit wonders), rescued by two great inventions: Shake Some Action (originally recorded in 1972) and You Tore Me Down. They were simply a retro` band like many others that played in hotels and casinos, but for mysterious reasons they became a cult item during the 1970s.

This and the following albums, Now (1978) and Jumpin' In The Night (1979), both of which included Mike Wilhelm (Charlatans' founder), increased the doses of covers, which steal the show from the originals (except for Jumpin' In The Night). Jordan kept the band alive in the oldies/nostalgia circuit. Rock Juice (National, 1992) is a late Flamin' Groovies album.

Loney, for his part — the author of most of their material — released the EP Artistic as Hell (1977) and then formed a new band, the Phantom Movers, recording Out After Dark (Solid Smoke, 1979), where he returned to pure, old-school American rock and roll, delivered with ironic exaggeration and with that typically tribal gait reminiscent of swamp-rock (Used Hoodoo and People People) or Native American dances (Scum City and Neat Petite), supported by an impressive repertoire of nostalgia (the passionate beat of I Love It, the teen-idol rockabilly of San Francisco Girls), all distilled in the relentless, rebellious anthem Phantom Mover. More disjointed, Contents Under Pressure (War Bride, 1981) still excels in the rock and roll of Cinema Girls, the boogie of She’s No Lady, and the pop of the title track. In this style of party music, Loney delivered another small masterpiece, Scientific Bombs Away (Aim, 1988), with the hiccupping rockabilly of Bip Bop Bom and the dumb novelty Here Comes Curley. Loney is a prodigious songwriter, capable of repeating the same riff and the same tempo in endless variations, and he is the only one among the revivalists who truly grasped the music’s “epic” spirit, in which every chord and every syllable is, above all, a war cry.

Except for the live Action Shots (Marilyn, 1993), Loney was silent for six years. After enrolling most of the Young Fresh Fellows and renaming them Longshots, Loney finally delivered another batch of new tunes, Full Grown Head (Shake The Record, 1994).

Roy Loney died in 2016 at the age of 73.