The Appletree Theatre | Brother Speed | (Verve Forecast) 1968

“Brother Speed” taken from the LP ‘Playback’ | (Verve Forecast SVLP 6018) March 1968

The Appletree Theatre | Brother Speed | (Verve Forecast) 1968 | ALTHOUGH ORIGINALLY FROM BUFFALO, Upstate New York, the Boylan brothers spent much of the ’50s living in Cambridgeshire, England while their father worked in prize-winning kidney research. When the family returned to the States they took with them a passion for a peculiarly English brand of comedy.

Terence: “We were very influenced by Beyond The Fringe and The Goon Show and always doing skits, usually for the amusement of our parents, sisters and friends. My brother, who was 5 years older, played guitar and ukulele and we incorporated musical elements into it.

So the birth of The Appletree Theatre was a natural evolution of what we were doing anyway.”

John: “Later when we came up with the name for the record we tried to make it sound ‘straw hat regional’ — like summer theatre.

In ’64 (after John’s excursions with a roving theatre troupe and a spell in Texas with the Air Force Reserve) the brothers enrolled together to study drama at the ultra-hip Bard College near Woodstock.

Terence: “The first thing we did was form a parody group called the Egos which made fun of ‘sappy’ rock ‘n roll recorded by people like Fabian.”

Dylan fans

John: “Walter Becker, Donald Fagen and Chevy Chase played. We would gig around campus doing send-ups of all kinds of stuff and parodies of folk music. I was a serious jazz fan — Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Canonball Adderley — but my brother and I were also huge Dylan fans.”

They had stumbled upon Dylan early after John, working in a record store, had mistakenly ordered his debut LP instead of the South Pacific soundtrack a customer was after.

Terence: “It was about two days old and I don’t think they could figure out how we knew enough to order it! John brought it home and within a few days I had learned every song and started singing them in folk clubs in Buffalo.

The Appletree Theatre | Brother Speed | (Verve Forecast) 1968

Because everyone else sounded like Peter, Paul & Mary and The Kingston Trio it turned me into the local Dylan. I was 15 years old and playing in the Limelight and the Lower Level (both coffee houses in Buffalo) and people were saying, ‘Who is this kid who plays guitar and harmonica?’

Then we got to Bard and Dylan came to visit. He was staying at Albert Grossman’s place trying to write songs for his third or fourth album and when he got bored he would come over with Bobby Neuwirth and his road manager Victor Maymudes to drink, hang out with college kids and try to pick up women.

All of a sudden he was sleeping on the floor of my room, drinking sweet red Vermouth and singing songs all night long: I flipped out! We went down to see the Philharmonic Hall concert that fall and you would hear his music coming out of the rooms, although people were still saying ‘Bob DyeIan’! It was pretty exciting to be hanging out with the person who was at the cutting edge of folk music.”

Beatles songs

“The Beatles, of course, were happening too, but we considered them completely separate. They were light and funny and we liked the humour in the clips we saw of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’. They seemed to be ‘riffing’ on the whole thing so they were cool to us.

The Egos started doing some Beatles songs too, but we quickly decided they didn’t fit in with what else we were doing. So we started to write our own Beatle-type songs that clearly showed the influence of Lennon, especially.

McCartney seemed more commercial, he was sweeter, whereas Lennon seemed darker, with some of the artistic integrity that we really admired.”
“The year after we started at Bard we decided to take jobs and get an apartment in NY, but what we really wanted to do was sing and play.

John: “It was mostly Chicago blues, folk-rock stuff, Dylan tunes and our own budding original compositions which would later appear on Playback. None of this was pop — we were too edgy.”

Terence: “I started singing at the Gaslight café and the following summer John and I took the rock band that we had — I forget the name — and got a gig at the Night Owl. That was a big deal. At that time they had The Blues Project, The Lovin’ Spoonful, Tim Hardin, Steve Stills and Richie Havens.”

John: “It was a coffee house with no alcohol and bench seats, but we were all smoking dope. After The Lovin’ Spoonful broke out of there in the summer of ’65 we auditioned and got the gig.

Café Wah

Fred Neil was playing at the Café Wah or the Gaslight. He was a real interesting guy — I loved Freddie a lot — but Richie Havens and Tim Hardin were the people who impressed me the most.”

Terence: “When the Spoonful got a record contract we figured that
if we just kept playing at the Night Owl we would get a deal too, but after two summers nothing was happening. We made demos with Kama Sutra and Columbia.

Tom Wilson rolled up and said, ‘I’m gonna sign you guys, man, this is great!’ but when he left that deal fell through. We kept missing it by one lawyer, I suppose.”

John: “We really went at it in earnest that summer of ’66 and decided to play up-town for a little more money at the Gordian Knot on the Upper East Side. It was a higher clientele — yuppies dancing — and we had to do a couple of covers, but we figured we could get a nest egg together and then record our own demos.

That’s when the old tragedy struck. During the first set a fire broke out and our entire investment of equipment — about $3,000 dollars — was totally destroyed. The club’s insurance was void because they had failed the fire inspections. It was a disaster for us, the band kind of fell apart and although we guested at the Night Owl for a while we were really struggling.”

The Appletree Theatre | Brother Speed | (Verve Forecast) 1968

“Then my brother came up with the idea to hit the office buildings in Tin Pan Alley and try and get a gig as staff writers. At first I was sceptical. Carole King and Neil Diamond were the kings of the street at that point and I simply didn’t want to write that sort of material: I was ‘Mr Folky-Blues!

The first one we visited was the Spoonful’s publishers Koppelman-Rubin Associates and — lo and behold — they hired us for $50 a week on the strength of playing songs in their office on our guitars!

That was when we began to write on demand for Charlie and Don. We would roll up at the office, go into a cubicle and start writing — it was fun and we had stuff recorded by Gary Lewis & The Playboys, Bobby Darin, Lesley Gore.

the Sunshine Company

We wrote ‘Look Here Comes The Sun’ (later released by The Sunshine Company) in ’66, which was about two years ahead of Harrison’s ‘Here Comes The Sun’.”

Terence: “The demos were just straight rock songs and the band was called The Gingermen (after the J P Donleavy hard drinking womaniser Sebastian Dangerfield).

In those days we weren’t really sure how much we could get away with. We were trying to pop-ise it — make it sound like what was happening at the time.”

Terence: “Then I went to MGM with a song I had written which was real smooth and pop — and a real turkey. It’s a good thing it never happened or I would have been branded as something like Herman’s Hermits! In any case a fellow named Pete Spargo at MGM signed me to a solo contract and told me to get my songs together to start recording.

But then John and I were shut in for about a week and a half together going crazy and we started to write some songs. This must have been January ’67.”

John: “We were living in this crummy apartment a couple of blocks from Needle Park [Sherman Square] but it was all we could afford. We had gone to a New Years Eve party of a classmate from Bard and I got a little drunk. I jumped off a balcony wearing stack-heeled boots and bruised my heels so bad I couldn’t walk for days!

Penny Lane

Meanwhile my brother caught the flu. Both of us were confined to the apartment so we got out a guitar and just started to riff on these ideas — and that became The Appletree Theatre.

We wrote ‘Hightower Square’ right then and there. That owed an obvious debt to ‘Penny Lane’, which had just come out [US release 13th February ’67]. After that we just started to write stuff.”

Terence: “In ‘Hightower Square’ there was also a parody thing going on. We had read, probably erroneously, that The Beatles were smoking banana skins, so that’s why in the interlude you can hear me in the background whispering, ‘Can I have some banana peel?’

When Johnny came in and started to write it with me I said — just for a laugh — what if in between every song we do some of our skits? We were in a comedy troupe in Bard at the time called the Groove Tube led by Kenny Shapiro, who had an early video camera.

The Appletree Theatre | Brother Speed | (Verve Forecast) 1968

Later on those tapes came out and some of the other players on them are interesting: Blythe Danner, Richie Allen, Chevy Chase. It was the prototype to Saturday Night Live.

So we decided to incorporate some of the skits into this album: theatre meets rock and roll with comedy sketches in between. We just felt it was happening. By the time the holidays were over I went back to MGM and said I didn’t want to make a solo album anymore, I wanted to do this thing which I’d cooked up with my brother.”

“We started to piece together the shape of the album and that’s where Johnny’s musicianship came in. He said, ‘Instead of using these hacks or the kids from down at the Village let’s get some of the players that I’ve seen on the backs of jazz albums I’ve admired.’

So that’s where people like Larry Coryell and Chuck Israels came from. And they all played for scales, I mean what was the difference?

jazz clubs

That was really John’s thing — he went to jazz clubs and hung out with the musicians, he knew what was cool and he was probably more In keeping with its overall concept the finished album faithfully followed the theatrical three Act structure, book-ended between an introductory Overture and the Epilogue (Act II being somewhat awkwardly split across both sides of the original LP).

“The Altogether Overture” opens, appropriately enough, with a portentous roll of timpani and Terence’s pompous preacher led astray by his brother’s off-stage prompting (‘Deep, you doper) before giving way to the staccato beauty and trippy guitar of “Hightower Square”.

This juxtaposition (both within and between songs) of style and purpose, melody and satire, sets the tone for much of the record. The themes of ‘squares’ getting ‘high’ and social and sensory dislocation dominate the proceedings, but the levity (as often as not at the expense of the Boylans themselves) is never allowed to replace solid songcraft and expert musicianship.

Many songs were born out of personal experiences.

John: “I was walking with my girlfriend on Bleecker Street — we were going to see Thelonius Monk. His sax player was Steve Lacy and his daughter was called Louise. We were going by Steve’s apartment when my girlfriend said, ‘I wonder if Louise is home?’ That phrase stuck in my mind and I wrote the song the next day.”

Medieval England

Terence: “One evening we were sitting in an Italian restaurant in the Village and there was a painting on the wall that looked like medieval England, so I started to write a song on my napkin.

There was definitely some wine and probably some pot involved. I had this gestalt feeling that I had actually existed in the scene depicted: for a time I even wondered if I had been a medieval monk in a former life!

Then I went back and checked the painting — and it was Italy — but to me ‘the forests all belonged to Robin Hood’ and everything was already in the song; so that’s why I called it “Nevertheless It Was Italy”.

All my friends were tripping at the time but I was not, so I think I was trying to describe my experiences on pot. It wasn’t exactly an acid album — although some of those who played on the record probably were on acid.

The Appletree Theatre | Brother Speed | (Verve Forecast) 1968

It was also a time when people were after some kind of ‘psychedelic revelation’ — everything had two meanings. You should have heard some of the interpretations of ‘Sgt Pepper’ among my druggy friends when it came out — they had an explanation for every word!

Just look at “Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite’. The Beatles were just ‘ writing about a circus poster, but people had theories about him being some famous drug dealer in London at the time who got everybody high! So we were also throwing stuff in and saying ‘Well, let them figure it out!’ There was a lot of poking fun at the druggies and the hip people.

“John had this concept of the nerd versus the hip person and a lot of the songs are about that. There’s a trilogy of songs commenting on contemporary Village life.

You would get all these girls dressed up like Cher walking around who were obviously company girls trying to be cool. Louise is a stockbroker trying to fathom the scene. The stoned guy answering the door is Richie Allen — he was an actor hired to be in the Mike Nicholls film The Graduate, but got ousted when they hired Dustin Hoffman.

The bit at the end between Richie and my brother was completely ad-libbed — Szymczyk had just been rolling the tape.

“E-Train” is about a girl from Queens [Forest Hills was a particularly smart area] who takes the subway to the Village, gets stoned and then goes back to her little pink world.

“Brother Speed” is a speed freak living on the street. That was largely germinated by my brother. We had this drummer who was the only guy who would turn up for gigs on time. He was a down-head who took Phemerol.

Richie Allen

We told him he sounded good but he kept slowing down and we had an important audition coming up at a club. Well he turned up at the gig and announced: ‘I’m off downers, I promise you I won’t slow down.’ What he didn’t tell us was that he was now on major speed.

So we started this audition and every song was three times the tempo! We got through a 40-minute set in about 9 minutes. So we told him to either take none or both.

Richie Allen was the guy at the beginning who says: ‘Where’s earth?’ and John couldn’t resist the pun: ‘You should have quit while you’re ahead’ . . . “

After “You’re The Biggest Thing In My Life”, the focus shifts away from the city. “Don’t Blame It On Your Wife” features a stunning orchestral coda, which, like many of the arrangements, was courtesy of Maurice Brown.

Terence: “He was the first cellist for the NY philharmonic. I would say ‘I want the strings to sigh just here’ and he would say ‘OK, we can put in a glissando.”

Banjo tune

“The Sorry State Of Staying Awake” features two long-distance truck drivers working shifts.

Terence: “The one saying ‘thanks’ has just pulled into a toll booth, then they start out driving and try to keep themselves going with a litany of drugs. It was also a commentary on American Radio at the time.

The ‘banjo tune’ is actually me on acoustic guitar and bass and John on piano — there’s no banjo. Died-in-the-wool folkies would always introduce a song as ‘an old banjo tune’, but half the time it never was.”

The song “County Fair”, which floats back and forth throughout, would later be ‘straightened out’ on Terence’s first solo album.

After “Barefoot Boy” (a self-conscious folk parody which also recalled John’s six month stint with the Air Force Reserve) and “Lotus Flower” (“there was a little fun with a razor blade on that song”)

“What A Way to Go” provides a sublime, mournful coda to the preceding levity. “That was the last song cut for the record. John was away and I recorded it with Mike Equine on drums, Zal Yanovsky on guitar and a woodwind quartet.

I remember we had to bounce tracks. It was a mood piece and I wanted this really soft, pillowy drum sound — like kettle drums — but in the end I had to make do.

I always got nervous about taking up too much time in the studio. It was an escapist song written on the beach up in Maine. It was a foggy day and I was trying to get all those sounds into the track — sort of ‘woo, woo’, gulls and frogs and a foghorn.

backwards echo

It’s backwards echo, which The Beatles were using at about the same time. We definitely started recording it before Sgt Pepper, but I doubt it was finished before it came out. The radio stations had a couple of tracks early – one was ‘A Day In The Life’ – and when I heard that it blew my mind because that was the sound I had been going for!

You have to put the album in the context of its time, because experimenting in the studio and trying to make new sounds was almost like having another instrument.”

John: “We had the album rapped up in late ’67 and in the shops for Christmas. The label got the single [“Hightower Square” coupled with “Who Do I Think I Am”, an early flowering of Terence’s solo MGM recordings] on FM radio and I went around to some of the stations, but I had to initiate that.

Since we weren’t a working band, their idea of promotion was pretty silly. For example they booked me on The Dating Game where I got to mention the album to a big audience – 20 million people – but I don’t know how many Appletree Theatre albums that sold!

I think the main problem was that we couldn’t tour as a band. I was busy producing records – by then I was working with Ricky Nelson and gravitating towards LA – and my brother was recording his solo album in NY.

So ambitious

So we had to make a conscious decision: are we going to put a rhythm section behind this and go out a slog it in the clubs? Quite frankly I don’t think either of us had the stomach for that. This material was so ambitious that really no band could have played it.”

Terence: “The Appletree Theatre is an artefact; it has an historical sense and it was influential at the time. When we put it out I didn’t think it was avante-garde enough to do its job. I wish we had gone farther and been more outrageous, but the record company had no idea what we were doing – they’d never seen anything like this.

We wanted to go in and insert four more skits before the record came out, but we had to rap it up rather than try their patience. That was the original Appletree Theatre concept, but it didn’t quite work out that way. As time passed people came up to me and said ‘Wow, that’s such a revolutionary record!’ I mean The Firesign Theatre acknowledged its influence, even Zappa.

Time magazine

There were people in the Village who I thought were the be-all-and-end-all who thought it was a groundbreaking record. So I had to revise my opinion!”

The LP was not without its champions, however, receiving a favourable nod from Time magazine and, in May ’68, Stereo Review: “The Boylans have spawned imitators at home and abroad with this innovative, brilliant and unique addition to the year’s rock album highlights”.

The same article reported that no less a critic than John Lennon had professed it to be ‘his new favourite album’. Terence: “Apparently the record company had more faith in our record after they heard Sgt Pepper— they suddenly thought a concept album would work.

I think the Time magazine article woke the company up to the fact that it even existed. We heard that it was doing very well — especially in England. That’s when I heard about the Lennon article. Apparently the album sold about 21,000 copies in the first quarter of its release but I don’t think we received a single royalty check.”

Marshmallow Skies

Following its release Playback had an extended life in other ways. “Brother Speed” was memorably recorded by Hamilton Streetcar on their sole LP for Dot (contrary to comments elsewhere, John Boylan was not involved).

Several songs were also reprised on ‘Another Side Of Rick Nelson’ with John Boylan in the producer’s chair (along with another notable original ‘Marshmallow Skies’, recently included in the Rhino LA box set Where The Action Is!) and Terence’s solo LP Alias Boona.

In the early ’70s the album was even reissued in the UK with an entirely different (but equally creepy) sleeve. (Rev-Ola CD liners)