PLEDGE WEEK: “My World Fell Down” by Sagittarius

This episode is part of Pledge Week 2024.

From Tuesday through Saturday this week, I'm posting some of my old Patreon bonuses to the main feed as a taste of what Patreon backers get.

If you enjoy them, why not subscribe for a dollar a month at patreon.com slash Andrew Hickey

All and down, round and round will sway with

A brief note before we start.

This episode features mentions of HIV-related discrimination and death, and a brief excerpt of some Nazi chanting.

One of the stories we touch on briefly in this week's main episode is that of the band Sagittarius.

Originally, the episode had a rather long digression about them, and they're also coming back briefly in the next episode, another part of the birds story.

But with the new format of multiple shorter episodes about a song rather than one long one, this seemed a little like too much of a digression to fit neatly.

So this week's Patreon bonus is a look at one of the more obscure acts we'll be dealing with in one of these bonuses, a studio collaboration that never had a hit.

The origins of Sagittarius lie in Gary Usher's work as a staff producer at Columbia Records.

Before he started to work for Columbia in 1966, his job had essentially been to make records with whoever was at hand.

He had tended to treat things like band names and artists as mere formalities, necessary for putting on a record label, but it didn't really matter if the record said it was by the superstocks or the sunsets, Mr.

Gasser and the Weirdos or the Silly Surfers.

It didn't even matter if Usher was the credited producer or some label executive was.

Usher's job had always been the same.

Pull together a bunch of musicians, give them a dozen songs, either ones he'd written or ones by his friends, record an album in a few hours, stick it out with a band name on it, on to the next session.

But by the time he was working at Columbia, things had changed.

While Annette Fonicello or Frankie Avalon had been fine singing Muscle Bustle or Beach Party, it turned out that David Crosby and Paul Simon weren't interested in doing what Gary Usher told them.

His role at Columbia was to facilitate the artists, not to create himself.

And even though he was working harder than ever, he wasn't creating anything like as much of his own music.

The opportunity to do so came when he was producing an album for Chad and Jeremy, a British duo who had been one-hit wonders in the UK, but had had several top ten hits in the US.

changes she goes through

have wearied her.

She writes to her sister at school in the East

to inquire how she is progressing

and startles herself by confessing.

Usher was unimpressed with the material the duo were working on, considering it uncommercial, and was under pressure from Columbia to produce a hit single for them, as they'd not had a major hit since signing to the label.

So he started looking for some outside material they could record and happened upon a recording by the Ivy League, which had been a flop single in the UK.

He was convinced that the song could be a hit, and not only that, that it was perfect for Chad and Jeremy, who were known for soft close harmony ballads.

But there was one problem.

Chad and Jeremy hated the song, and no matter how much Usher insisted that it could be the thing that brought them back to the top of the charts, they just flat out refused to do it.

So Usher decided he was just going to make the record himself.

The track he recorded was very clearly influenced by the work his friend Brian Wilson was doing at the time, so much so that some people have suggested that one of the reasons that Wilson abandoned work on Smile was that he thought Usher had beaten him to it.

As Usher wasn't much of a vocalist himself, The main lead vocal on the verses was by Glenn Campbell, who had not yet had a major hit himself, and was best known as a session guitarist, but who had also filled in as a temporary beach boy in 1965.

And the leaves are bright

since you

And on the choruses, the lead was taken by Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys, who also sang lead on a new bridge section, which didn't appear on the original record by the Ivy League and seems to have been written by Usher.

Another of Usher's additions was Odder.

At this point, Usher seemed to have a minor obsession with breaking up songs with short excerpts of music concrete and sound effects.

He did this on Faking It by Simon and Garfunkel, one of the tracks on which he was an uncredited co-producer, and on several other tracks around this time.

And he seems also to have influenced Jim Guercio, who was at this time Chad and Jeremy's bass player, to do the same on Susan by the Buckinghams.

But the section on My World Fell Down is possibly the most jarring.

Usher sent the finished master off to Clive Davis, the head of Columbia Records, who was impressed and told him to sign the group, which was a problem as there was no group.

But Usher didn't want to admit that.

He knew that if he told Davis that he had had enough time to produce side projects by himself, Davis would load him up with more production work.

Luckily, Usher knew someone who did have a group.

Kurt Becher was a singer and songwriter from Wisconsin, who had started out in a folk group called the Goldbriars, who had performed traditional material in a close harmony style that was something close to what groups like the Mamas and the Poppers would later do.

Oh, don't you leave me here?

Oh, don't you leave me here

The Goldbriars had never had much success, and when the craze for clean-cut folk groups ended, Becher had moved into other areas.

He'd first formed a duo, Summer's Children, who'd released a couple of singles, but he'd gone into production rather than continue trying to become a star in his own right.

Usher had first encountered Becher's music while working with Brian Wilson in the studio.

The two had been sat in a control room and had heard something that enthralled them coming from the next studio in the complex.

They'd wandered over and found it was an engineer mastering a single by Lee Mallory.

That's the way it's going to be.

They discovered that the track was produced by Becher and quickly decided they were both Kurt Becher fans.

Soon a lot of other people became fans of Becher's work, though they didn't know it.

Becher produced the first album by the Association, coming up with the vocal arrangements, including on their big hit Cherish, and was an uncredited co-writer on Along Comes Mary.

Oh, will their

He was also the uncredited producer for several hits for Tommy Moe and credited as vocal arranger on Moe's album It's Now Winter's Day, which featured Betcher on backing vocals along with Dottie Holmberg of the Goldbreyers, Lee Mallory, Michelle O'Malley, Sandy Salisbury and Jim Bell, among others.

You

are my winter,

the days

and the night

in our

highway.

It's now

Winter's Day.

Our love

will be stronger,

a middle strong.

Inside,

we will play.

It's now

Betcha, O'Malley, Salisbury, and Belle were all part of a band that Becher had formed as another attempt to get himself a career as a performer.

The Ballroom only released one single, a startling version of Baby Please Don't Go.

if I'm way down here,

you know I'm way down here,

down in the road and bars So baby, please don't go, baby, please don't go

But they were working on an album and Betcha was someone who spent a lot of time in the recording studio.

A lot of time

and it so happened that the studio he was using for the ballroom's recording sessions was the same one that the birds were using for younger than yesterday, and he kept overrunning and eating into the birds' studio time.

Sometimes by mere minutes, but other times by as much as two hours.

Eventually, Usher got sick of this and confronted him.

and discovered that Becher was the same person who had made that Lee Mallory record that he had been so impressed with.

The two quickly struck up a friendship and Usher realised that Becher would perfectly complement his own abilities in the studio.

Usher was someone who was keen to experiment, but he was also very much a company man, who would get the job done quickly and get out, while Becher would spend far more time working on tracks.

Becher also had a wonderful singing voice, which Usher definitely didn't.

And Becher was as interested in mysticism and mind expansion as Usher was getting.

Usher said that the ballroom album Becher was working on was the first LSD album he'd ever heard.

But that album wouldn't get released, at least, not in that form.

All of the toys

I played

with

out

of tune,

my

Betcha at the time was in a business and production partnership with a producer named Steve Clark, but Usher wanted him for Columbia.

There were also problems between Usher and Clark,

and Warner Brothers, the label for which the ballroom were recording, was unhappy with their work.

So Usher arranged for the Ballroom's contract with Clark and Warner's to be bought out, and the chord tracks from the Ballroom sessions were now to be used, with some additional overdubs, as the basis of what was to be the first Sagittarius album.

Betcher started getting Usher involved in a hipper scene than the surf and hot rod music scene that Usher had been part of previously, taking him along to Monterey.

Usher later said, Kurt was really a big influence on me, and he fitted perfectly into the Monterey scene.

He was trying to get me out of the shirt and tie Hondell scene and into the new street scene, and I think in that respect his influence was beneficial.

It really was a period of growth.

Becher also worked with Gene Clark around this time, producing two tracks that went unissued but which have later turned up on re-issues of Gene Clark with the Gosdin brothers.

Through the cracks she said she heard the ocean calling

Foghorny cries profanity at the master of insanity

as she watches ruins needing lead

and sobbing

Betcher also contributed vocals to some birds recordings, which we'll talk about in the next episode.

But Betcher and Usher's collaboration merely started with the second Sagittarius single, Hotel Indiscreet, on which Becher sang lead.

You'd get a shot in, there's no names upon what went to screen.

All the cash, no checks, no signatures, there's no questions, ask them sending, no circumstance,

That track, despite having Becher's lead vocals, was definitely an Usher work first and foremost.

Right down to being a second Sagittarius single to feature an excerpt of music Concrete, this time including a certifical rant from another of Usher's discoveries, the Fire Sign Theatre.

air within,

standing naked before the eternal judge, and proclaiming

we are all hip!

Two, three, four,

hip, two, three, four, hip, two, three, fifth, lips, five, three, here, sing higher, tick higher.

While My World Fall Down made the lower reaches of the Hot 100, Hotel Indiscreet didn't even do that well, and the record label was so unimpressed with these collage excerpts that the versions on the eventual Sagittarius album, Present Tense, had the collages from both singles edited out, much to their detriment.

There was no such problem with the third Sagittarius single, a song written by Becher, and one of the finest things he ever wrote.

There was a different edit, though, this time to the lyrics.

Listen to Becher's original demo.

Another time

you'll be the mother who's found the light.

Not knowing that he's also found his death.

But you'll you'll understand another time

So I guess I'll say

And now to the same section in the version released by Sagittarius

Because by then

we'll share the time I'm only dreaming

Another time

you'll be the one who's found the light I'm glowing

She's also found her dead

Betcha was queer.

He's generally described as gay, but he did marry at one point and have a child.

And as we've discussed before, the labels people attach to themselves can change over time.

But clearly, having him sing a love song with male pronouns would not be the most commercial decision that could be made in 1967.

The Sagittarius project was very much Usher's baby at the start, but Becher ended up dominating the finished album.

Usher had other commitments and only contributed one new song to the album, a track called The Truth Is Not Real.

The rest of Present Tense was made up of the previously released singles, a few ballroom tracks, and one song, Glass, whose lead vocalist was apparently just a friend of Becher's who turned up to the sessions.

Usher co-produced the new recordings, helped with the overdubs on the ballroom material, and is often doubling Becher's vocal on songs where Becher takes the lead, singing the same part lower in the mix.

But the finished album is about 70% Becher and his friends, 30% Usher.

And Becher was so productive at this point that almost simultaneously with the Sagittarius album, another album by another group of his came out.

Becher is only credited as a writer on half the tracks on Begin, the only album released by the Millennium during their time together, and only three of those are solo credits.

But he's still undoubtedly the driving force on the album.

The Millennium were a self-contained band, and all seven members were accomplished songwriters and vocalists.

Drummer Ron Edgar had played with Becher and the Goldbriars before going on to join the music machine, which also featured keyboard player Doug Rhodes.

Sandy Salisbury had been a member of the ballroom, Becher had produced records for Lee Mallory as a solo solo artist, and Joey Steck and Michael Fennelly were new songwriters who Becher had been introduced to.

Begin was, by some accounts, the most expensive album that had ever been made up to that point, and it was one of the earliest to be recorded on 16 tracks.

But it was an expensive flop, even though it contained some great material.

The choices of single reflected the fact that the band was, in theory, a democracy.

The first single was It's You, a song by Steck and Fennelly.

Looking at my only

window,

trying

to see through

Looking at my frosted window,

Tying to see through

Something is

And the other singles were Steck and Fennelly's To Claudia on Thursday and Salisbury's 5am.

But despite this, everyone has agreed that Becher was the dominant force in the studio, to the detriment of the rest of the band, some of whom have gone so far as to describe their experience of the Millennium as being cult-like, with everything attuned to the leader's whims.

After the album flopped, the group split up.

For the most part, the Millennium and Sagittarius recordings were completely ignored, but there was one odd exception.

Even before the albums came out, several songs from them were covered by the biggest band in Sweden, who were trying to break the international market, and hired Becher's old partner Steve Clark to produce an album for them.

when you're not looking

And run to me

To blindly ask what's on your mind

Another time

you'll find me in a game

And ask if you can swing It's been a Long, Long Time by The Hepstars included four Betcha songs plus Sandy Salisbury's 5 AM

and covers of songs that Becher had produced for Tommy Rowe and the Association.

Clearly, Betcher was seen as having far more commercial potential than the group's keyboard player Benny Anderson, who only wrote one song on the album, though Anderson would go on to have a few hits of his own when he went on to form ABBA.

Soon after the Sagittarius and Millennium albums came out, Both Usher and Becher left Columbia Records and started up their own label, Together Records, with Keith Olson, Becher's production partner on the Millennium Material.

Both Usher and Becher worked on a huge amount of material, together and separately, but most of it never got released.

The one exception being a second Sagittarius album, The Blue Marble.

Happy State

Happy Night Still they don't see the light above them

Yet it loves them

Becher would go on to release one solo album in the mid-70s but he recorded so much material

particularly in collaboration with Sandy Salisbury that new archival material is still coming out regularly, and much of it is as good as or better than the material that was released at the time.

But the material that Becher was involved in in the 70s that did see release was generally fairly poor.

He did sing backing vocals on several Elton John records, including the hit, Don't Go Breaking My Heart.

crown.

Nobody knows it, nobody knows

it.

But right on the star, I gave you my heart.

He also got involved in a project called California Music, which at various times involved most people from the surf music scene of the 60s, and which recorded an eclectic mix of remakes of Ballroom era songs, disco remakes of Calypso songs, and a seven-minute yacht rock ballad about the Marx Brothers by Bruce Johnston.

Much of his work in the late 70s was on Beach Boys side projects.

He did backing vocal arrangements on Bruce Johnston's solo album Going Public, which was produced by Usher, and produced Mike Love's solo album Looking Back with Love, none of which are highlights of Johnston, Love, or Becher's careers.

Wikipedia also credits him with backing vocals on Dennis Wilson's much better solo album Pacific Ocean Blue, but I don't hear him on there, and he's not credited elsewhere for it.

He was also largely responsible for one of the most controversial recordings in The Beach Boys' career: their attempt at going disco, Here Comes the Night, which Becher co-produced and did most of the backing vocals on himself.

Here comes the night, oh, here comes the night, oh, oh,

here come, here come, here now, here comes a night,

But for the most part, Becher's musical reputation rests on his work from 1965 through 1973, and its best to draw a veil over the last 14 years or so of his work.

And that reputation is one that has only grown in the last 30 years or so.

For the first couple of decades after its release, Begin by the Millennium was a cult album, one that, for example, Jack Holtzman of Electra Records would always list as among the best albums ever made, but with almost no audience.

But in the 90s, as a generation of musicians like Santetien, Stereolab and the High Llamas started to be influenced by 60s Exotica and Soft Pop, Becher's work became endlessly name-checked and reissued, with massive archival releases like a 3 CD box set of all the Millennium and Ballroom recordings.

Sadly, Becher didn't live to see this.

According to his ex-wife, with whom he remained on friendly terms after their divorce, he tested positive for HIV in the mid-80s.

He didn't get AIDS, but he developed a lung infection and went to the hospital for a biopsy.

During the biopsy, a blood vessel was clipped, and because the staff were terrified of getting infected themselves, they just let him bleed to death.

He was only 43.

ears.

Rollin', rockin' rhythm of the sea.

Bull it ooh, rock and roll, burda doo, yeah.

Robin, rollin', rollin' of your way.

On the down, round and round, we'll sway with the swell

in the spell.

Rollin', rockin' rhythm of the sea.