Happy 2026 - anything happen since the last time I
posted?
I wrote this article for Urban Milwaukee in advance of
the Flamin’ Groovies’ Milwaukee date on its 2014 U.S. Tour, which also took
them to New Orleans, Austin, Dallas, Memphis, and elsewhere. Miriam Linna of
Norton Records was kind enough to include a quote about her love of the band.
In 2017, the Groovies put out a new album, Fantastic
Plastic, their first with new material in more than two decades. The subsequent
years have seen new archival releases, including 2024’s Liberation Hall-
released Let It Rock: Live From The San Francisco Civic Center 1980, which I
gave some spins to on Zero Hour. The documentary mentioned in the article, The
Incredible Flamin’ Groovies Movie, still hasn’t been released.
Nearly five decades after they first began, the Flamin’
Groovies, who play next week Saturday, at Northern Lights Theater, are finally
making it to Milwaukee.
The band’s long, strange trip from San Francisco circa 1965
to Brew City is not one that can be explained by a GPS. It is one marked with
typical and not-so-typical destinations and detours for rock ‘n’ roll
musicians: lots of lineup changes, hopefulness, drugs, disgust, delight,
numerous record labels, bitter breakups, and several no-doubt, oft-covered,
true blue classics: “Teenage Head,” “Slow Death,” “You Tore Me Down” and “Shake
Some Action.”
The late music historian and Bomp Records honcho Greg Shaw
described the Flamin’ Groovies in down-and-out yet heroic terms for an article
he wrote about the band – a decade into its existence – for the spring 1975
issue of his celebrated magazine Who Put the Bomp!
“The Flamin’ Groovies have endured perhaps more hardships
and disappointments than any of their fellow survivors, been screwed so many
times by managers and record companies that it became a way of life, and been
without a recording contract for so long that some of their best friends aren’t
even sure if they are still together. … When the Flamin’ Groovies finally
emerge, I can’t think of any band in the world with greater potential to create
real mania and show the world what a rock & roll band should be.”
Shaw’s article, “The Return of the The Flamin’ Groovies:
America’s Coolest Teenage Band is More Alive Than Ever,” ended in true believer
style: “They’re gonna make it this time.”
A few years before Shaw, whose first release on Bomp was a
45 of the Groovies’ “You Tore Me Down”/”Him or Me,” pounded out his
proclamation, the band had undergone what would be its biggest transformation
in 1971– the departure of original lead singer Roy Loney and entrance of Chris
Wilson. With Loney and the songs he wrote with guitarist Cyril Jordan, such as
“Headin’ for the Texas Border” and “High Flyin’ Baby,” the Flamin’ Groovies had
made their name – or perhaps sullied it in some quarters – over three albums
with wild-ass, R&B-based rock-n-roll that had bad intentions, loud guitars
and heartwarming lines like “When ya’ see me/better turn your tail and run,
‘cause I’m angry and I’ll mess you up for fun.”
With Wilson on board, the band began to shift its focus to a
more pop-oriented sound that took its cues from the Byrds, Beatles and others,
but it would be five more years before the Flamin’ Groovies would put out
another full-length album. In 1976, the Dave Edmunds-produced Shake
Some Action began a run of three albums on Sire Records. The new
Groovies songwriting team of Wilson and Jordan would substantially add to the
band’s legacy, but once again “making it” wasn’t in the cards, and by 1981,
Wilson was out of the band.
By that point, Wilson said in a phone interview with me, he
and Jordan “couldn’t stand the sight of each other.”
“We were totally fed up,” he says. “I didn’t want to see
anybody for years. I didn’t want to play music anymore. I was so pissed off and
frustrated with the whole thing. I did give up for a couple of years.
“Ten years of living out of each other’s suitcases and have
no flipping success, you know, it was really hard.”
Wilson moved to London and eventually joined another band
(The Barracudas), while The Flamin’ Groovies would continue on for another
decade, performing on and off. They put out their last studio album in 1992 and
disbanded shortly afterward.
The seeds of the current reunion go back to 2008 when Loney
and Jordan teamed to do some live shows with members of The A-Bones and Yo La
Tengo that took them to London. There they met up with Wilson, who had hoped to
enlist them both for a solo album he was doing. Wilson explains their shared
agreement to put the past behind them this way: “I went down to a show to see
them, and we all just went, aw f*#k, here we are.”
A-Bones drummer Miriam Linna, who runs Brooklyn-based Norton
Records with husband and bandmate Billy Miller, is a Flamin’ Groovies expert
and hardcore fan. She published a Flamin’ Groovies fanzine in the 1970s, and
Norton has released several Flamin’ Groovies live albums, singles and rarities
compilations. She offered her assessment of the dual appeal of the long-running
band.
“Throughout many lineup variations over the years, the only
constant has been Cyril Jordan. Without Cyril, there could not be a Flamin’
Groovies,” Linna tells me. “That said, neither can there be a true Groovies
without one of the two lead singers – original and never-to-be-trumped main man
Roy Loney of “Teenage Head” and “Flamingo” fame, and Chris Wilson of “Shake
Some Action” fame.
“For many fans, for many years, the twain never met – in
fact it was impossible that the twain could meet,” Linna goes on. “It was
understood that Roy represented the original real rock ‘n’ roll-based band, and
Chris represented the Shake Some Action era, which was
unfortunately relegated to power pop status, a phrase that still gives me the
willies. No one ever touched the hem of the Teenage Head garment, on the terms
that the Loney-Jordan godhead established, and the same goes with the
Wilson-fronted SSA lineup – they are simply unbeatable.”
Last year, Wilson and Jordan, along with original bassist
George Alexander and new drummer Victor Penalosa did shows as the Flamin’
Groovies in Japan and Australia and a few dates around the United States. In
November, Wilson and Jordan released the digital-only single “End of the
World,” which was the first song they had written together in 32 years.
Writing with Jordan was like “falling off a log” – no
trouble at all, Wilson says: “We’re constantly making each other laugh. Cyril’s
a couple of years older than me, but we grew up in that period in America in
the late ‘50s and ‘60s where everything was so cool and so funny. We’re
actually mean, crotchety old bastards now. We always have had the same sense of
humor and we finish each other’s sentences. He was like my brother. His mum was
like my mum; she took care of me for 10 years. I lived pretty much with Cyril
and his family. We’re old mates.”
Wilson says the band just finished recording two more songs
in San Francisco that he co-wrote with Jordan, including “Like a Hurricane,” a
song that they wrote for Merry Clayton, who was recently featured in the
documentary 20 Feet From Stardom.
The Flamin’ Groovies hope to put out a full-length album of
new material, Wilson says, but the band might first put out a few more songs as
digital downloads.
“I try not to get involved with all that,” he says. “It’s
enough for me to actually play and sing. I hate the business end of it because
I really don’t understand it anymore – if I ever did.”
A documentary about the band, The Incredible Flamin’
Groovies Movie, is currently being filmed by William Tyler Smith and Kurt
Feldhun. Information about it can be found at here.
“Get your tickets now,” Wilson said. “It’s going to be very
funny. Very cinéma vérité.”
Linna said it is great to have to the Flamin’ Groovies back
in all its versions. Alexander and Jordan joined Loney and past Groovies Mike
Wilhelm and James Ferrell for Wilson’s recent solo album, It’s Flamin’
Groovy!
“The fact that both tag teams have reunited to serve up the
majesty of the band whose fan club I ran as a teenager, is unbelievable,” she
says. “The huge benefit of George Alexander coming to the fore on bass has
resulted in the joyous, unchanged onstage guitar/bass bond that is
transcendent. I’ll always love the music of the Flamin’ Groovies – always.”
