Hotter Than a Match Head: My Life on the Run with The Lovin' Spoonful
336
Hotter Than a Match Head: My Life on the Run with The Lovin' Spoonful
336eBook
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Overview
On October 15, 1967, bass player Steve Boone took the Ed Sullivan Show stage for the final time, with his band The Lovin’ Spoonful. Since forming in a Greenwich Village hotel in early 1965, Boone and his bandmates had released an astounding nine Top 20 singles, the first seven of which hit the Billboard Top 10, including the iconic Boone co-writes “Summer in the City” and “You Didn’t Have to Be So Nice.”
Little did Steve Boone know that the path of his life and career would soon take a turn for the bizarre, one that would eventually find him looking at the world through the bars of a jail cell. From captaining a seaworthy enterprise to smuggle marijuana into the U.S. from Colombia, to a period of addiction, to the successful reformation of the band he’d helped made famous, Hotter Than a Match Head tells the story of Boone’s personal journey along with that of one of the most important and enduring groups of the 1960s.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781770906020 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | ECW Press |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 336 |
| Sales rank: | 797,112 |
| File size: | 17 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Hotter Than a Match Head
Life on the Run with The Lovin' Spoonful
By Steve Boone, Tony Moss, Jennifer Hale
ECW PRESS
Copyright © 2014 Steve Boone and Tony MossAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-77090-602-0
CHAPTER 1
YOU'RE A BIG BOY NOW
* * *
I was supposed to be a military man, just like my dad.
I was born John Stephen Boone — named after early naval heroes John Paul Jones and Stephen Decatur — at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, during the height of World War II, on September 23, 1943. My first memory is looking up from the crib at a couple of my dad's Marine buddies in their dress blues. At my christening, the commander of the Marine Corps base proclaimed that I'd be "the future commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps." No pressure, kid.
My dad, Emmett Eugene Boone Jr. (everybody called him "Junie" for short), was doing air and sea rescue for Marine aviators who were training there on the Carolina coast before being deployed. My pop, who had previously worked directly for FDR in the "summer White House" in Warm Springs, Georgia, had training in seamanship and small-boat handling, which helped him into this job working with young men waiting to ship off to the Pacific and World War II.
Still too young to understand why certain people were our enemies or grasp the carnage that accompanied war, I developed a deep respect for the United States military and in particular the Marine Corps. This respect and exposure drove my early desire to become a naval aviator and, for at least the first 16 years of my life, becoming a member of the armed services was all that I ever considered for a career.
I built all the models of World War II and Korean War aircraft, both the newer plastic and the balsa wood, which required a lot more concentration and patience. I also learned how to fly control-line powered model airplanes and was fascinated by both oral and written histories of World War II and the Korean conflict.
We moved a few times when I was a kid, with every move having a deep impact on the various interests I'd develop.
After my dad was discharged from the service, we moved to Buck Hill Falls, a resort village in the Pocono Mountains of eastern Pennsylvania. His background before he'd joined the military was in the hotel business, and it was at another Pennsylvania resort that he'd met my mother, Mary, some years before. My father and grandfather ran the inn at Buck Hill Falls, which was connected to a 36-hole championship golf course and country club. Since my dad and granddad both worked there in management positions, I pretty much had the run of the place.
It was while living in Buck Hill Falls that I learned to hunt, fish and swim, as well as play tennis and golf. I developed into a good enough athlete to take first place in the Junior Olympics at summer camp. I learned how to shoot a rifle and march in time as a member of the Marine Corps League Junior Rifle Association, though one notable incident from my youth would instill in me a healthy respect for the dangers of firearms.
My parents were out for the evening when Skip, my older brother by six years, found the key to my dad's rifle cabinet. Out came the .30-06 deer rifle, and with childish humor, knowing the rifle would never have been put away loaded, Skip pointed it at me. He raised the barrel just enough to clear my head, pulled the trigger and ... BAM. The sound was so loud that the house shook. In stunned silence, Skip and I stared at each other, then at the golf-ball-sized hole in the wall of the family living room.
I wasn't dead, but knew that might change when Mom and Dad came home.
We carefully placed the rifle back in the cabinet, put the key back where it belonged and came up with the brilliant, sitcom-ready plan to move a framed picture from another part of the house to cover the huge hole in our wall.
It took my parents about 15 seconds to size that one up. I remember a lot of yelling, and Skip stepped up and took the brunt of their anger. I guess since I'd almost taken a bullet for him, he was willing to take one for me ... in a manner of speaking.
Life was idyllic in Buck Hill Falls, but it was just before my 11th birthday that a different family trauma would necessitate another move for the Boones.
One day while Skip and I were at school, my six-year-old brother Charlie reached up to the stove in the kitchen and pulled a pan of boiling hot water onto himself. He was wearing cowboy boots and heavy clothing at the time, which helped trap the scalding water against his skin, making the burns more serious. He was rushed to the hospital and given what was then considered experimental skin graft surgery. Charlie very nearly died.
To facilitate his healing, doctors recommended we move to a humid climate. As it happened, my grandfather was in the process of retiring to St. Augustine, Florida (along with his much younger secretary) to a small truck farm off the Tolomato River, just north of downtown. He had been going down there for the past few winters, and my family had been joining him for a month each winter in a cottage next to the one he rented at Aldea Del Mar on St. Augustine Beach. So we were familiar with the terrain, and since my dad wanted to leave hotels anyway to start a business building custom wood furniture, the decision was made to move in the fall of 1954.
While I'd liked living in the Poconos, I immediately fell in love with St. Augustine, its warm weather and its ocean. We wound up in a nice little house on Anastasia Island, in the Davis Shores development, and sailing, surfing and waterskiing became a regular part of my routine. My schoolmate John Heagy and I built our own little motor-powered go-carts to drive around the then-unpaved streets of Davis Shores. I joined the Boy Scouts and had two paper routes, one in the morning and one in the evening. I had yet another brush with death while working that job. I was pedaling my bike furiously across the Bridge of Lions on the way to my route, when my foot slipped off the pedal and the locked coaster brake flipped me completely over the handlebars, headfirst. I spilled out onto the roadway where, as it happened, one of my brother Skip's best friends barely brought his car to a stop with the right front tire just a foot from squashing my head. The newspaper business can be tough.
But the water was everything to me from the time we set foot in Florida. I devoured C.S. Forester's books about Captain Horatio Hornblower, the fictional hero of the Royal Navy. I was captivated by the National Geographic spreads written by the champion yachtsman Carlton Mitchell, who wrote about the joys of cruising the Caribbean, of living on a small sailboat and of racing his 38-foot yawl Finisterre to victory in the Newport Bermuda Race three times in the second half of the 1950s.
Noting the aquatic passions of his second son, my dad started the St. Augustine Optimist Pram fleet in a joint effort with the local Rotary Club. Optimist Prams are simple little eight-foot dinghies that are the entry-level boat for sanctioned sailing in the U.S. I took to the little boats naturally and was soon the club champion. It was a huge confidence builder, though I'd get an early dose of humility that would mean more than all the victories put together.
The best six or so sailors in the club were entered to compete in a big out-of-town regatta in St. Petersburg, a regional event that was going to be my first experience sailing outside the club. While I'd been competing against 10 or 15 sailors in my local races, I looked around at the start of this regatta and saw 200 boats, sailed mostly by people with much more experience than me. I was completely overwhelmed, got caught in the wind shadow and soon fell to dead last. I finished slightly better — third from last. Complete humiliation. I stalked off to the station wagon and sulked.
Soon came the announcement to prepare for the next race, and my dad walked up to the car and said, "You better be getting ready, you've only got 15 minutes 'til the start."
"I'm not racing this race, or any race," I said in tears.
"And why not?" he demanded. I said nothing.
With less patience in his voice, the order came: "Get yourself down to the boats!"
"No," came my reply. "I can't do this anymore."
Now his tone went from impatience to Marine Corps gunnery sergeant and he got in my face and said, "I am going to give you two choices: number one is to go sail this race as best you can, and number two is ... you know what number two is."
I was there in plenty of time for the second race, and finished a reasonable seventh or eighth in that race and the third and final one. After we'd loaded up the boats and were headed home, my dad broke the terrible silence by saying, "There is absolutely no way you can be a winner if you quit. No son of mine is going to be a quitter, is that clearly understood?"
It was. My dad taught me that there was more shame and failure in quitting than anything else, and it was advice that would stay with me throughout my life.
Rock 'n' roll would arrive later for me, but it would indeed arrive.
I'd loved music from an early age, when my family would gather around the piano at holiday time and sing Christmas carols. I enjoyed the classical music I heard at home, particularly Liszt and Chopin, and also knew the soundtracks to Broadway musicals like South Pacific and Annie Get Your Gun by heart. I'd wedge myself between the speakers of my dad's hi-fi, which was set up in the library of my grandfather's house in Buck Hill Falls, and listen for hours. I took piano lessons for about a year in Pennsylvania but didn't continue amid my new, outdoors-based life in Florida. I also tried tap dancing for one semester, which, while it may have helped with my sense of rhythm, did not evoke a young Gene Kelly.
All of that said, rock 'n' roll was something completely different — and magical.
I'll never forget one day, on my way home from crewing for a neighbor who raced a D utility class boat on the St. Johns River, when "Peggy Sue" came on the radio. Now, I had heard of Buddy Holly before and thought his hits were great, but when I heard this record I almost flipped. The rhythm was unique and the singing style was beyond cool. If there was any one moment in my life that made me want to be a musician, this was it.
During this time Skip had started playing guitar well enough to begin a band with some friends of his. They named the band The Blue Suedes, after the Carl Perkins song that had also been a hit for Elvis. The Blue Suedes even got to meet the boy King on his way through Jacksonville, as they were dispatched to find Elvis an acoustic guitar when his got lost in airplane baggage. Skip and the Blue Suedes' lead singer, Arthur Osborne, got far enough to record two songs in Nashville for new producer Chet Atkins at RCA Records. All of this was really getting my attention. Skip was six years older than me, so there wasn't much hope of tagging along or hanging out with the band, but the exciting stuff they were doing wasn't escaping me either.
Before long I decided to try my hand at performing, like my older brother. I'd been singing in the grade school choir, mostly because everyone sang in the choir, when my seventh-grade homeroom teacher, Sister Mary Gemma (whom I had a huge crush on), suggested I understudy for the lead role of Ralph Rackstraw in the school's performance of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta H.M.S. Pinafore. What the heck, I said. It was something to do, I'd meet some girls, and the lead, Paul Emory, would surely show up, so I could enjoy watching the play like everyone else.
Wrong.
Paul got laryngitis and I had to go out there and basically talk my way through all of the songs that poor Ralph had to sing to win the fair maiden's heart. Stage fright and I were already second cousins, but at least I did it. Once it was over, there was no denying that performing had offered quite a rush.
Still, my long-term objective remained the military. I had the required crew cut and my parents had enrolled me in a small Catholic school, St. Joseph's Academy, with the hopes that the nuns there could get my grades up enough that I could try for an appointment to the Naval Academy. St. Joe was a great fit for me. It was small and a good environment for learning. Most of the students were female boarders, many of them from Cuba and South America, and there was a very small percentage of boys. I was even able to go out for the football team — the coach needed every possible body just to fill out the roster. Another check off my list for service academy appointment.
Then, in the summer of 1958, as I enjoyed myriad outdoor activities in the terrific weather, preparing to start another year at this great school where I really felt I belonged, my father dropped an atom bomb on me: we were moving again.
With the woodworking business struggling, Dad announced he was taking a hotel job in East Hampton, New York, right next to his old hometown of Westhampton Beach.
I was beside myself. I had been in Westhampton Beach once or twice when we lived in Pennsylvania, but I could not imagine spending another winter anywhere colder than Jacksonville. What about sailing? Waterskiing? What about the Navy? This was going to mess up all of my plans.
In a fit of personal crisis, about a week before we were set to move, I hitched a ride up to the Navy base at Mayport to plead my case to the recruiters. I carefully and passionately explained the situation, and asked what I'd have to do to join the Navy right now.
"The first thing you have to do is get about four years older," the recruiter told a frenzied boy of 14.
I'd be joining my family in the Hamptons, where old money goes to die and new money tries to get old. This would not be my idea of a good time. East Hampton was and still is the summer home of many wealthy people — in the 1950s it was truly the summer playground for the old-money set from the city. Because my family was not part of high Hamptons society, access to sailing was not going to be as easy as it had been in St. Augustine.
East Hampton High School was huge, and I was growing taller and skinnier, which also meant my high school football career was over — I took one look at those potato farmer linemen and ran the other way. I hated leaving Florida and never fit in very well with most of the students in my new class.
At 15 — the worst possible time to lose your self-confidence — I was bottoming out.
There had always been tension in my house. I loved and admired my dad, but he was a rum drinker and a bit of a tyrant. I'll never forget him slamming his fists down on the dinner table when anyone dared to defy him, particularly when it came to his largely right-wing politics. My mom was a beautiful Irish-Catholic lady who had to put up with a lot, including my dad's philandering. Now I was adding to the bubbling toxicity in the house with my rebellion.
I introduced a motorcycle jacket and longer, "ducktail" haircut to my look, and in what had been a mostly formal, buttoned-down military household, the changes were noticed. I also started drag racing on weekends with the few friends I had.
My parents were hopeful that what I was going through was just a phase, and that I'd get my act together and get back on track toward a military career. Honestly, they were probably right. By the end of my junior year at East Hampton I was starting to snap out of my funk and get back to normal. That's when it happened — June 26, 1960 — the day everything changed.
It was the last day of junior year, and I went bowling with my friend, Bob Schwenk, to celebrate. At about midnight, after bowling a few games, Bob and I decided to hitchhike home, a mode of travel that was not such a big deal in East Hampton in 1960.
Just then, one of our schoolmates, an older guy named Jim Harkness, drove up in a tri-powered Chevy Impala, a big, fast car that his parents had bought for him.
"Come on, guys," Jim said. "I'll give you a lift."
Jim had a reputation as a drinker and reckless driver, but getting in a car with someone who had been drinking just wasn't a concern back then like it is today — it especially wasn't a concern for a couple of invincible 16-year-olds like Bob and me. We dropped Bob at his house and headed into town toward mine. It was getting foggy, and Jim was driving way too fast down a long road, appropriately known as Long Lane, that had a reputation as the town's most dangerous.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Hotter Than a Match Head by Steve Boone, Tony Moss, Jennifer Hale. Copyright © 2014 Steve Boone and Tony Moss. Excerpted by permission of ECW PRESS.
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Table of Contents
PrologueChapter 1 — You’re a Big Boy Now
Chapter 2 — Good Time Music
Chapter 3 — Do You Believe in Magic
Chapter 4 — Daydream
Chapter 5 — . . . It’s a Different World
Chapter 6 — Pow!
Chapter 7 — It’s Not Time Now
Chapter 8 — Didn’t Want to Have to Do It
Chapter 9 — Day Blues
Chapter 10 — Never Going Back
Chapter 11 — Respoken
Chapter 12 — Forever