The Left Banke started at the top, launching its recording career with the 1966 debut single "Walk Away Renée," which became both a Top Five smash and an iconic pop classic. They followed it with the equally memorable hit "Pretty Ballerina" and the beloved LP Walk Away Renée/Pretty Ballerina. Less well known, but no less noteworthy, is the band's underappreciated second act.Although it largely escaped the public's notice upon its release in November 1968, The Left Banke Too is an unsung gem that remains close to the hearts of a dedicated cadre of fans. Recorded after the departure of keyboardist/songwriter Michael Brown, the sophomore disc finds his former bandmates—frontman Steve Martin, bassist/guitarist Tom Finn and drummer George Cameron—rising to the occasion to produce music whose ambition and expressiveness matches, and in some cases surpasses, that of the band's more prominent prior work.
The Left Banke's original lineup had combusted shortly after Walk Away Renée/Pretty Ballerina's release, and the group split into two factions, with singers Martin, Finn and Cameron on one side, and Brown and his father, manager/producer Harry Lookofsky, on the other. The schism led to Brown (with help from songwriter Tom Feher, who had contributed to the first album, and singer Bert Sommer) releasing his own single, "Ivy, Ivy" b/w "And Suddenly," under the Left Banke name, and releasing it in April 1967 on the band's label, the Mercury Records subsidiary Smash. After Finn, Martin and Cameron hired lawyers and won back control of the band name, Smash withdrew support from Brown's single. But the resulting confusion over the competing Left Bankes resulted in a loss of commercial momentum from which the band would never recover.
The two factions temporarily reconciled in the spring of 1967 to record a pair of Brown/Feher compositions, "Desirée" and "In the Morning Light." Brown produced those sessions, with John Abbott (who played and arranged on the first album) as arranger and various New York session musicians playing most of the instruments.
While the appropriately sunny "In the Morning Light" wouldn't be heard until it turned up on The Left Banke Too, the grand, orchestral "Desirée" was released as a single in June 1967 and was arguably the Left Banke's most impressive, expansive achievement to date.
"Desirée" should have been a valedictory triumph for the band, but instead the song stalled at #98 on the Billboard pop chart. Although it became a minor hit in some regional markets, radio programmers—still leery of anything Left Banke-related in the wake of the "Ivy, Ivy" controversy—largely avoided it. The reunion with Brown ended there, and Finn, Martin and Cameron (who by then had also parted with the band's guitarist, Rick Brand) continued as the Left Banke, although it would be another year before their next release.
The next Left Banke single, recorded with producer/arranger Artie Schroeck, paired the Finn/Martin/Cameron composition "Dark Is the Bark" with the Finn-penned "My Friend Today." When it arrived in June 1968, the Four Tops' recent hit cover of "Walk Away Renée" was fresh in listeners' minds. But that didn't help "Dark Is the Bark," which failed to chart altogether—a fate that would befall all of the band's subsequent singles.
Its lackluster reception aside, the Left Banke's first effort as a threesome demonstrated them to be capable of intoxicating, mysterious songcraft that matched anything they'd done with the prior lineup. On both songs, their harmonies were augmented by the voice of Steven Tallarico, then a member of the New York band Chain Reaction (which shared management with the Left Banke) and soon to gain fame as Steven Tyler of Aerosmith.
Despite the commercial failure of "Desirée" and "Dark Is the Bark," Smash Records gave the go-ahead for a second Left Banke album, and teamed the band with producer/arranger Paul Leka, who had recently scored a hit with the Lemon Pipers' bubblegum-psych number "Green Tambourine." Leka acceded to the trio's insistence on dispensing with the session players who had dominated their previous recordings, allowing the band members to record their own instrumental tracks. Longtime collaborator Tom Feher was also brought in to play piano on the sessions and contribute to the songwriting.
"We were still pretty optimistic at that point," Finn recalls. "We'd been playing for about two years, so we'd gotten some confidence and we'd gotten a lot better on our instruments, and we were writing some good songs."
The sessions with Leka yielded six tracks, which would be included on The Left Banke Too along with "Desirée," the as-yet-unreleased "In the Morning Light" and both sides of the "Dark Is the Bark"/"In the Morning Light" single. In addition to showing Finn, Martin and Cameron comfortably taking the creative reins, the six new songs also show the three stretching beyond their formal roles within the group. For instance, Finn sings lead vocals on his compositions "There's Gonna Be a Storm" and "Nice to See You," while Cameron steps up front on the Tom Feher-penned tunes "Goodbye Holly" and "Bryant Hotel." Meanwhile, Martin plays drums on "Goodbye Holly" and bass on "Bryant Hotel," while Finn doubles on guitar and bass on most of the songs.
"We had always intended to be a multi-lead-singer group and try different things, but we were never allowed to do that on the first album," Finn explains.
Feher plays piano on all of the Leka tracks, except for his lilting composition "Sing Little Bird Sing," on which he provides 12-string acoustic guitar. And departed member Rick Brand returns to play 5-string banjo on "Bryant Hotel."
Although The Left Banke Too showed their creative batteries to be fully charged, it wasn't long before the group's morale was sagging. The album was lost amidst a flood of new hippie acts, and the band—which toured with Tom Feher on keyboards and new guitarist Tim Hayden—experienced a new set of frustrations with its new management team, which Finn says kept them on the road, with little financial reward and no discernable career benefit to the group.
"They had us out there milking the hits to pay their bills, and it just felt like we were getting nowhere," Finn explains. "We really started to fall apart in early '69, and then we were done."
Although the trio disbanded, Steve Martin and Michael Brown reunited in the studio shortly thereafter to record one more single, "Myrah" b/w "Pedestal," which was released under the Left Banke's name in November 1969. In 1971, Martin, Finn, Cameron and Brown came together to record Brown's songs "Love Songs in the Night" and "Two by Two." The results were released under Martin's name, both as a single and on the soundtrack LP of the little-seen film Hot Parts, both on the Buddah label.
In the 1970s, Brown would record with Montage, Stories and the Beckies, while a 1978 Finn solo project would evolve into an abortive Left Banke reunion with Martin and Cameron; a set of demos from that project would see release in 1986, as Strangers on a Train in the U.S. and Voices Calling in Britain. In the years since, various combinations of Left Banke members, including Brown, have periodically reunited in the studio to work on new material, but the fruits of those efforts have remained unheard by the public.
Years of speculation regarding a Left Banke reunion came to an end in March 2011, when Finn and Cameron teamed with a group of New York musicians for a pair of shows in New York, marking the first Left Banke gigs in more than four decades and the first time many of the band's songs had ever been performed live. The reunion shows' rapturous reception underlines the ongoing fan interest in the Left Banke, and the fact that the songs from The Left Banke Too were as well-received as the more familiar hits demonstrates the high esteem in which this album is held by the band's admirers.
—Scott Schinder
1. GOODBYE HOLLY |