Sylvester Stewart, another local DJ (he later rose to prominence as Sly Stone), moonlighted as an artist and producer for the label and tackled the project of producing the new band.Įlliott penned 'Laugh, Laugh,' a sort of romantic revenge tale ('I hate to say it, but I told you so.') with Mulligan's harmonica work perhaps the song's main hook. KYA air personalities Tom Donahue and Bobby Mitchell had established the independent Autumn label (scoring an immediate smash with 'C'mon and Swim' by Bay area dance specialist Bobby Freeman) Donahue saw the Brummels perform and signed them. Irish-born guitar-harmonica man Declan Mulligan also joined (so the band was one-fifth British!?) and by mid-'64 they were playing small clubs in the area. The Beau Brummels came together about two years later with the addition of bass-playing college student Ron Meagher, lead guitarist and college dropout Ron Elliott and drummer John Petersen. Sal Spampinato was the first among their ranks to make a record, the trendy, treacly 'I Wanna Twist' in 1962 under the group name Sal Valentino and the Valentines. Setting the ostentatious battle cliches aside, I'd say the Beau Brummels were quite simply a very talented group. The mild moniker fake-out fooled few and the band's first single, 'Laugh, Laugh,' scored one for the red, white and blue while also drawing attention to what would soon be a thriving rock scene in San Francisco's Bay area. The Beau Brummels led the charge, doing so with an Anglicized name that belied their San Franciscan origin (the real Beau Brummell was an early 19th century British military man and fashionista, perhaps the first person to publicly combine those two distinctions).

The public's tastes were changing it seemed logical to incorporate a bit of the Brit mindset into what became a folk-rock retaliation of 1965, gradually enabling American rock and roll to reclaim its never-totally-relinquished home turf. Someone had to attend to the task of slowing the pace by which so many music acts from England were claiming higher percentages of Western Hemisphere radio airplay and record sales with each passing month during 1964.

Beau brummels you tell me why