The Left Banke

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The Left Banke were a US pop group that caused a sensation in 1966 with their only hit. The head of the band was Michael Brown , the son of the New York composer Harold Lookofsky , who formed the band with school friends in 1965 - only 16 years old. Despite his age, the classically trained Brown had already proven himself to be an accomplished songwriter and was now looking for an opportunity to record his pieces. His father owned a recording studio in New York and got the quartet a record deal with Smash Records .

The Left Banke's first single , Walk Away Renée , was their greatest success: In September 1966 it reached number 5 on the US charts . Like most of the band's material, the piece came from Brown's pen and was originally written for the girlfriend of his bandmate Tom Finn. Walk Away Renée was a piece with a strong classical touch that - dominated by strings and Michael Brown's piano - initiated the new, albeit short-lived style of music Baroque Pop . In the same style, the band was able to celebrate another, albeit lesser, success with Pretty Ballerina, which was again composed by Brown . A first LP followed in early 1967.

At this point the first quarrels began to break out within the band. Above all, the votes of the members, who now also wanted to bring in self-written material, increased. It turned out that the success of Walk Away Renée had come too soon and too early for The Left Banke : Your head Brown left the group in 1967 and devoted himself to solo recordings. The rest of the band tried their hand at composing, with a constantly changing line-up, but without success. At times only individual members were involved in recordings; the results were summarized in a second LP in 1968. After its publication, the Left Banke chapter was closed in 1969.

In 1969 Michael Brown worked as a songwriter and instrumentalist on the group's self-titled album "Montage". He later formed two other bands, the Stories (1972 to 1973) and the "Beckies" (1976), of which at least the former achieved a few hits in the early 1970s. Walk Away Renée remained the Left Banke's only legacy and was later covered by artists such as the Four Tops , Willie Loco Alexander & the Boom Boom Band and Vonda Shepard . The piece was included by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the "list of the 500 songs that have shaped rock and roll the most".

Members

history

1965-1967

Michael Brown met the technical assistant Steve Martin, the drummer George Cameron and the bassist Tom Finn in 1965 in the studio of his father Harry Lookofsky, in which he worked as a studio musician. The four musicians discovered their mutual love for popular music and decided to found a group similar to the Beatles . Finn, Martin and Cameron began to work out vocal arrangements for well-known songs like Good Day Sunshine (Beatles) and Under My Thumb ( Rolling Stones ) as well as their own compositions, while Brown accompanied them on the piano. Lookofsky became aware of Martin's voice and choral singing and produced the band's first single in early 1966 with the original compositions I Haven't Got The Nerve and I've Got Something On My Mind . The product aroused no interest from record labels, whereupon the band broke up and Brown went to California with drummer Warren David, who had played on both tracks.

Before the breakup, the group had been working on one more song: Walk Away Renée . Michael Brown wrote the song after Tom Finn introduced his girlfriend Renée Fladen to the band in late 1965. Brown fell in love with flatbreads and spontaneously wrote three songs: She May Call You Up Tonight , Pretty Ballerina and Walk Away Renée . When he left for California, only Renée 's backing track was recorded and now had to be completed with George Cameron replacing Warren on bass, and the vocals of Finn, Cameron and Martin. Lookofsky finally convinced the subsidiary label Smash of the record company Mercury to release the song as a single. It unexpectedly peaked at number 5 on the US charts and made Left Banke famous overnight. With Martin's tenor voice and Brown's piano in the foreground and the accompaniment of a string ensemble, Left Banke's music was now referred to as baroque pop. The band got back together, hired Jeff Winfield as a guitarist and went on a tour.

In early 1967 the band went back to the studio to record a similar sounding song by Brown with Pretty Ballerina . This reached number 15 on the charts and Left Banke was asked by the record company to follow up with an album in accordance with the marketing practice of the time. Since only Brown had a musical education as a pianist, session musicians such as guitarist Hugh McCracken and drummer Al Rogers were primarily employed when recording the LP Walk Away Renée / Pretty Ballerina .

With the success and praise of the critics, disagreements also returned to the band. The first victim was Winfield, who was replaced by Rick Brand because Brown and Martin questioned his skills as live guitarists. Despite the two hit singles released on it, the album only reached number 67 on the charts, whereupon Brown, frustrated with his performance in live performances and unwilling to continue touring, left the group.

Left Banke now split into two factions. Brown envisioned a career similar to that of the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson , but he also intended to claim the Left Banke name. He recruited Bert Sommer, a songwriter who had contributed a few songs to the first Left Banke album, as a singer and recorded new material with him, including the single released tracks Ivy Ivy and And Suddenly . When the other Left Banke members threatened legal proceedings over naming rights, the radio stations refused to air the single, fearing they would be drawn into the dispute.

The band got out of the management contract with Lookofsky and reconciled with Brown. The result of the reunion were the recordings for Desiree and In The Morning Light . Desiree was the group's last chart success, but could only reach number 98 in the charts, whereupon Brand and Brown went their own way again. The latter joined the assembly group.

1968-1988

Cameron, Finn and Martin returned to the studio in 1968 to complete the album Left Banke Too (original title: Dress Rehearsal ) with the help of keyboard player Emmit Lake, guitarist Tom Feher and singer Steve Talarico ( Steven Tyler , later with Aerosmith ) . The material consisted of new contributions from the pen of Finn and Feher, as well as the previously recorded songs Desiree and In The Morning Light . The record company still decoupled several tracks as singles, but canceled the band from the contract at the end of 1968 when neither album nor singles showed significant sales.

Over the next two years, the group tried several reunions. So Brown and Martin recorded the single Myrah in 1969 and in 1971 the entire original line-up recorded another with Love Songs In The Night , which was officially released as a solo single by Steve Martin. After none of the efforts succeeded, Brown turned his back on Left Banke for good and turned to his new projects The Stories and The Beckies.

In 1969 the other members also officially ended their collaboration. Tom Finn explained the move in an interview with Mojo magazine in 2002: “We met Donovan at World Record Studios in 1969 and he told Steve that George Harrison liked Walk Away so much and that the Beatles were about to break up. It was like an omen for us. We said let's break up. We did the best we could. We just didn't feel like going on in a Beatle-less world. We made a few more records later, but it wasn't the same ”.

Finn, Martin and Cameron got together again in 1978 and recorded the album Strangers On A Train (released in Europe as Voices Calling ). After this and the single Queen Of Paradise was barely sold, it disappeared in storage until it was re-released in 1986 by Relix Records.

Discography

  • I Haven't Got The Nerve / I've Got Something On My Mind (Single, 1966)
  • Walk Away Renée / I Haven't Got The Nerve (Single, 1966)
  • Pretty Ballerina / Lazy Day (single, 1966)
  • Walk Away Renée / Pretty Ballerina (album, 1967)
  • Ivy Ivy / And Suddenly (single, 1967)
  • She May Call You Up Tonight / Barterers And Their Wives (single, 1967)
  • Desiree / I've Got Something On My Mind (single, 1967)
  • The Left Banke Too (album, 1968)
  • Dark Is The Bark / My Friend Today (single, 1968)
  • Goodbye Holly / Sing Little Bird Sing (Single, 1968)
  • Give The Man A Hand / Bryant Hotel (single, 1968)
  • Nice To See You / There's Gonna Be A Storm (Single, 1969)
  • Myrah / Pedestal (single, 1969)
  • Love Songs In The Night / Two By Two (single, 1971)
  • Strangers On A Train (Voices Calling) (album, 1978)
  • Queen Of Paradise / And One Day (single, 1978)
  • And Suddenly It's The Left Banke (album, 1982)
  • And One Day / I Can Fly (single, 1986)
  • There's Gonna Be A Storm (compilation album, 1992)

Web links

Commons : The Left Banke  - collection of images, videos and audio files