Time has an unforgiving habit of burying most bands. If that’s true, then it’s a minor miracle we’re still talking about a little retro band called Flamin’ Groovies a half-century later. They never shifted many records nor shot up any chart with a pebble, let alone a bullet, and yet the name of this cult band gets spoken in hallowed terms among some as progenitors of power-pop and even punk rock. If you have ever heard the Groovies before now, it’s likely been their brilliant failed single “Shake Some Action” from their 1976 album of the same name. The song brings almost nothing original to the table yet unlocks a magic that remains intact after a thousand listens. It’s also the time capsule that keeps getting dug up by young bands, critics, and listeners, preserving the Groovies for others to stumble upon. By no means is a perfect song like “Shake Some Action” a poor legacy; however, its relatively long shadow has left the band’s most imaginative era and finest album, Teenage Head, neglected for far too long.
Flamin’ Groovies were an anachronism from the beginning. Co-led by frontman Roy Loney and guitarist Cyril Jordan, the San Francisco outfit ignored their hometown’s late ‘60s obsession with “flower power” and psychedelia in favor of reviving ‘50s-style rock and roll, Merseybeat from across the sea, and rhythm and blues. This iteration of the band—including Tim Lynch on guitar, bassist George Alexander, and drummer Danny Mihm—would record an EP and three full-lengths, all of which dabbled in earlier genres and none of which captured the public’s imagination. However, the Groovies had one very prominent fan of their third studio album, 1971’s Teenage Head: none other than Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger reportedly dug the record and even opined that the Groovies had captured a modern take on blues-driven rock better than the Stones had on Sticky Fingers, their now-legendary blues throwback, which came out a mere month after Teenage Head. While I can’t in good faith argue the Groovies managed to out-blues the Stones, it’s far past due for Teenage Head to receive its flowers, dead or otherwise.
It doesn’t take long to stumble upon what Jagger might have admired about Teenage Head. Though the Groovies look more like the White Stripes than a rugged blues band on the album cover, “High Flyin’ Baby” drops us right into a garage decked out to feel like a honky-tonk. They opt to run a victory lap out of the gate before Jordan’s riffing finally merges with the rest of the band’s groove. Loney’s gruff, rapid-fire vocals about the untameable “Baby” ricochet off each other, like a feline hopping from paw to paw on a hot stove, often ending a line with a croak that sounds filtered through a tracheostomy valve.
The Groovies also reveal a rebelious penchant for bucking structure when it suits them. Instead of a second verse after the harmonized chorus, Loney grunts, which seems to cue Lynch’s searing harmonica and a series of hard-hitting fills from Mihm as the band go careening along. As the song rallies down the homestretch with its chorus on repeat, it’s almost as if the band can’t decide how to end matters, at one point abandoning Loney like he’s the one person left singing to the radio in a packed car. All of it comes together for a raw live sound full of unpredictability and semi-organized chaos.
Almost before “High Flyin’ Baby” gets a chance to land, “City Lights” stumbles out of some backwoods country saloon. All daydreams and moonshine, this loitering ambler sets its bumpkin protagonist’s sights and Stetson hat on the bright lights of the big city. It’s a romanticized New York City that Loney sings about longing to visit, one of neon lights, movie stars in big fur coats, and “the empire’s tallest building / where the plane shot that big monkey.” Even if he’ll never quite take a bite out of that Big Apple, we can appreciate the band’s confidence to meander through a slow, melancholy ballad rather than only lean on garage noise and mayhem. Jim Dickinson, who also plays on “Wild Horses” from Sticky Fingers, lends some dreamy barroom piano to the city’s siren call, and the Groovies sound like The Band-lite when the others join Loney on harmonies as the song winds down. Just two songs into Teenage Head, and it’s already clear that this earlier version of the Groovies wasn’t going to be easily pinned down.
Like most rock outfits of that time, a revivalist band like the Flamin’ Groovies knew their way around a cover song. The third track on Teenage Head, “Have You Seen My Baby?,” catches them hitching a ride on a riverboat to New Orleans to cover this chugging 1970 Fats Domino B-side, written and played on by a young Randy Newman. The band manage to keep the song’s integrity intact while also souping it up like a V8 dropped into a go-kart. They crank up the garage racket, turn the interlude into a piano boogie, and hoot and holler until that milkman drops “Baby” back home. In typical Groovies’ fashion, it actually sounds like the band accelerate into the song’s fade-out. The group also demonstrate their reverence for the Delta blues by paying homage to Robert Johnson with their cover of “32-20.” Loney updates the lyrics (most notably disarming “Baby” of her deadly .38 special) as Jordan’s slide guitar jump-starts this cheating song into a swinging, little ditty that most might never guess was older than everyone in the band.
“Yesterday’s Numbers” is the Groovies in a perfect blend of locked in and incorrigible. Alexander’s bass thumps like a finger to the chest as Loney insists, “I want to know you well / Know your heaven, baby, know your hell” while the melodies drip from Jordan’s guitar and harmonies. And for all this tight interplay, the band still opt to have a cathartic group scream midsong and leave all the studio banter in the final cut, including the hilariously wishful declaration that “all’s well that ends well” as the track comes to a merciful resting place. Similarly, Lynch’s squawking harmonica drives the title track, making the frog-throated Loney’s most lascivious lines (e.g. “She’s a teenage love machine”) sound even more lustful. Midway through “Teenage Head,” the song mysteriously teleports itself from the roadhouse to the stadium arena for a muffled, inexplicable guitar flex before hopping back to its home dimension. It might be partly due to these types of leftfield curiosities that the Groovies rarely grow stale and tend to defy genre even as they’re creating pastiches.
The back stretch of Teenage Head sees the band playing the retro game a bit straighter. After the aforementioned “32-20.,” the jittery rockabilly of “Evil Hearted Ada” finds Loney snarling, yelping, and hiccuping like Elvis Presley about his “sassy” and “sly” woman, including a final dramatic flourish that sounds like he’s closing out a Vegas show before hitting the buffet and craps table. They did not learn this down on the bayou, but it’s still damn good fun. The same can’t be said about the following track, “Doctor Boogie.” Despite the band latching on to a tight groove and Loney promising us that he’ll “keep boogying until they throw [him] in a hearse,” it’s hard not to skip past this one. It’s an example of the Groovies bringing the chops but not the oddball chutzpah that makes them memorable.
If one song could replace “Shake Some Action” as the Groovies’ signature number, closer “Whiskey Woman” would be the one. It’s the band’s big-hearted stab at something truly grandiose, their “Free Bird” moment. A simple strum drops us into a thick, swampy rocker, with Loney sounding like he’s singing into a tin can and the band’s voices floating in like a fog above marshland. “As I sit and write this song,” Loney plaintively sings. “You’re the one thing on my mind.” Yearning may not be the most complicated emotion, but the frontman sure as hell sells it here. As the band speeds up and accelerates toward the last available groove on the record, Loney sounds like a desperate man (“I want you / Where are you?”) wading through the bog as he tracks down his lover. The song fades out before the search concludes or the band slows down, leaving us to believe that the whiskey woman remains missing.
The history of the Flamin’ Groovies can be told as a tale of two bands. Original members Loney and Lynch left the group shortly after the world failed to wrap their noggins around Teenage Head. Jordan would become the driving force behind the outfit from then on, bringing in Chris Wilson to fill in as frontman for Loney. Together, the new Groovies would all but abandon the raw, rambunctious blues sound that had once tickled Jagger in favor of leaning more into pop and revitalizing the sounds of the British Invasion. It’s a shift that brought us “Shake Some Action” and shaped how we still remember the Flamin’ Groovies all these years later. Still, on certain nights, it’s those city lights and a whiskey woman that call us back to the high flyin’ days of Teenage Head.
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