George Bunnell - The Strawberry Alarm Clock Interview

Tell me about growing up in Lawrence, Mass. What was your childhood like and how did you initially get into music, more specifically the bass? Do you have any siblings?

I was born in Lawrence in 1949 but we lived in North Andover, Ma. I lived there till we moved to California in 1952…I was only three. We lived with my grandparents and my aunt and uncle and their three kids until my dad went off to the Korean War, then we moved into the veteran’s housing project. My dad was in the Navy and had also served in WWII. So when we moved to California my maternal grandparents, the Giarrusso’s, moved with us. My grandfather’s brother had an Italian restaurant in North Hollywood and they had a house behind it, so we all moved in with them until my grandfather bought his own place around the corner. My grand uncle and aunt had two boys still living with them who were quite a bit older than me and they had a band. The first time they rehearsed at the house I was in awe. They had organ drums and guitar. (organ with bass pedals) I knew then I wanted to be a musician, but didn’t know what to choose. Two years later my parents bought their own house in Canoga Park about 15 miles west as my mom was pregnant with my brother. He’s five years younger than me. Once I started elementary school I had the opportunity to play something in the school band. I chose violin because I wanted to play fiddle. Mistake… All I could do was play the songs for the Christmas show and whatever else was going on… I lost interest. After that I thought I would try accordian because my cousin played one. It proved to be too labor intensive carrying it in its case to school every day. That led to me joining the chorus and then the glee club. Those were okay but uninspiring. Then when I was about twelve surf music was starting to happen and me and some of the other kids on the block were grabbing anything we could turn into sound. My friend had acoustic guitar with only the four low strings so I was trying to be the bass player. One kid hit pots and pans and another kid had a guitar with all the strings on it. That was it… I had to be in a band. Then in 1963 we moved again. This time a little further west to Woodland Hills. That move proved to be serendipitous because we moved in next-door to who would become my songwriting partner and best friend, Steve Bartek.

What would you do for fun back in the day before music took over? Who were among some of the first groups, or artists that made a heavy impact on you? Did you participate in any groups prior to SAC?

We had a surfing culture in in the LA area. Just about everyone tried it. Some got really good and others like myself just went to hang out. I preferred body surfing. We would go to the beach almost daily as it was only 10 miles away… You could hitch a ride back then. I loved baseball and played little league… Unfortunately I kinda sucked at it. We played football and ran track…but all roads kept leading to music. The Beach Boys really made an impression on me when they first came out but I loved early Elvis… Before the movies, etc. I also like liked musicals… Oh oh. Then the British Invasion happened. By then I was playing a real electric bass and was wowed by the greats… and still am. I was in several band prior to SAC. Mostly unknown surf bands and rock bands. When and where did the band first get together to jam/rehearse in ‘66 and what was the initial chemistry like between everyone? When and where did the band make their live performance debut and what was that experience like? How did the name come about? During this time I was writing songs with Steve Bartek who was also an accomplished flute player. We wrote a song a day. He is 2 1/2 years my junior. We wrote many of the songs on the first SAC album between 1965-67. Just prior to SAC I was in a high school band called Waterford Traene. The drummer was Randy Seol who would get an audition to play and sing for Thee Sixpence, who would become SAC, because their drummer Gene Gunnels quit at the behest of his then girlfriend. (He had just recorded the drum track to Incense and Peppermints) So Randy got the gig.

His first task was singing and arranging the background vocals for Incense. They asked Randy if he had any original songs and he told them about Steve and I. They asked us to come to a rehearsal and play them our stuff. Well we did and they wanted to do all of them including a song my band had written which became The Worlds on Fire. Some of the other songs were Rainy Day Mushroom Pillow, Birds In My Tree, Strawberries Mean Love, Paxton’s Back Street Carnival, Hummin Happy and Sitting On A Star. From there we went into the recording studio and they asked me to play bass and sing harmonies on these songs, even though they already had a bass player. They had Steve play flute on two of them as well. After the sessions they asked Steve and I to join their band. I said yes but Steve had to ask his parents as he was only 15… Permission not granted. There was an odd chemistry between everyone in the band. There were some dynamics already in place before Rand and I came aboard. They had a disdain for their bass player. He would be expelled from the band after the first album. My first live performance with them was at The Hullabaloo club in Hollywood with opening for Arthur Lee and Love. Oddly enough the band that went on first was The Public Bubble who were the guys from my high school band with Steve Bartek. Steve was asked to play with Love that night too. The name… UNI records told the band that their name was similar to several other bands at the time and to come up with a new one. So, the keyboardist, Mark Stephen Weitz wanted to use Strawberry, because of Strawberry Fields Forever. The band was in the rehearsal room at Mark’s parents house trying to come with something when his little Big Ben alarm clock started making a noise… voila’!

Tell me about writing and recording the band’s legendary debut record “Incense and Peppermint” in 1967. Walk me through the process and approach to creating this wonderful record as well as some back story to some of the songs that are featured on the album such as the title track “Incense and Peppermint”, “The Worlds on Fire”, Unwind With The Clock” and “Lose to Live.

Incense was started as an instrumental from a piano idea Mark had. He called guitarist Ed King to come over and help with the bridge. Once finished they went into Original Sound to lay it down. It was first called The Happy Whistler. Mark played Farfisa organ and grand piano…both doing the same part. Ed played bass, rhythm guitar and lead guitar. Gene played drums and cowbell. That’s it… Just the three of them. Later, the producer, Fran Slay said he had a song title by one of his songwriters called Incense and Peppermints which he thought fit the music they just recorded. So they went along and let Frank send the track to John Carter in Denver. A couple of weeks later he came back with the body of lyrics. They tried Mark, Randy and Lee Freeman as the lead vocalists but none seemed right for the song. Hanging out was another friend of the band, Gregory Munford. He was a solo artist who was with the same manager and producer… He was basically a studio rat… Great writer, singer and multi instrumentalist. So they asked him to take a shot at it. Everyone liked it so the finished it up and released it. They asked Greg to be in the band but he declined. Unwind with The Clock was directed from another song and so was Pass Time with The SAC. Mark and Lee wrote Lose to Live and Worlds on Fire was from my previous band.

How did the deal with UNI Records come about? What was the overall vision for the album? What sort of impact did this album make on your music career as well as personal life upon its release? What was the first order of business once the record came out?

The manager Bill Holmes and producer Frank Slay brought the success I & P was having on local radio stations to Russ Regan at UNI. It was first on All American which was our manager’s label. The song had become the most requested song of the week on several local stations. Russ liked the song and gave them a singles deal. Once it started to climb the charts they gave them an album deal. The single went to Number one on Billboard and the album went to number 11. Smash hits. We were then hooked up with the William Morris agency and worked to death. That following year in ‘68 the band recorded their iconic follow up “Wake Up… Its Tomorrow”.

Can you tell me how much you guys wanted to approach this record that differed from the previous album? When and where did recording the album begin and would you mind giving some brief background history on some of these as well?

The Wake Up album was our freedom project. We had just come off of a hugely successful debut and were given carte blanche. We had toured with The Beach Boys and The Buffalo Springfield and were hugely influenced by both. We recorded it at TTG studios in Hollywood. The Doors were recording their third album, “Waiting For The Sun” downstairs while we were upstairs. Our first album was recorded in two weeks with a budget of $2,500.00. We were pretty well rehearsed before going in. This was completely different. For Wake Up we were writing and arranging some of it right there in the studio. Lee and Ed were doing a lot of the writing and singing duets. Ed did a lot of the bass parts as he had written them into the songs. I had to learn them for the live shows. His bass parts on Pretty Song from Psych Out, Soft Skies, No Lies and the Black Butter Trilogy are brilliant. Ed is the bassist on Skynyrd’s Freebird… On YouTube you can find that bass part isolated. The song Tomorrow, which reached number 23 on Billboard was released before we even started recording the album. Why? Because our manager and producer screwed Mark and Ed out of the songwriting credits for I & P… It was mostly the managers fault… He wanted his name on the copyright along with Mark, Ed and John Carter and Tim Gilbert… The lyricists. The producer told him to F off and sent it in with only Carter and Gilbert. So, to make up for this he had Mark and Ed write the follow up single hoping it would ride on the coattails of the big hit… Which it did, but the release was premature and had no album to back it up. When the album finally came out the single was done and the album failed to chart. What should have happened was to release a couple more singles from the first album while we were readying the second. A side note here is that Ed hated his bass part and guitar solo onTomorrow and the version on the album is his new parts which were killer. Meaning that if they were released together the new improved Tomorrow would have fared much better. The stupidity didn’t stop there. They put Birds in my Tree from the first album as the flip side to Tomorrow. Then they made Paxton’s Back Street Carnival from the first album the flip side of Sea Shell from the THIRD album! The band would go on to record two more albums, “The World in a Sea Shell” and “Good Morning Starshine”.

Would you mind walking me through those albums? What eventually happened to the band after ‘69? Did you continue to write music after the band? What do you hope folks take away from the band’s history and legacy the most? What still keeps you going and writing music to this day? Are you currently working on any new projects you’d like to share with the readers?

Well, because the second did not make the charts the record company and producer and manager decided it was our fault for making an esoteric record and the brought in outside writers for the third album. They also brought in George Tipton and put brass and strings on a few songs. We did have fun playing live with them all in the studio but it wasn’t us so to speak. We all decided to fire the manager at this point. But in the meeting to do so he claimed he had cancer and only six months to live…so Randy and I quit. That guy just passed away last year. He was a crook as we later found out. Mark, Ed and Lee picked up the pieces and carried on as SAC with Jimmy Pitman and the return of their original drummer Gene Gunnels for the recording of Good Morning Starshine. Randy and I went back to our high school band mates with Steve Bartek in a band called Buffington Rhodes. We did some great concerts. Opened for Procal Harm, Love, Chicago and Ten Years After. But we self destructed. After that it was concept band after concept band but success would mostly elude us. Steve Bartek finished his college education and wound up as the lead guitarist, arranger and co producer of Oingo Boingo for their entire run from 1976 to 1995. He then went on to greater success as Danny Elfman’s right hand man doing film scores and orchestrating. Ed King famously went on Lynyrd Skynyrd and co wrote Sweet Home Alabama. In 2007 we regrouped for Roger Ebert’s 9th overlooked film festival. All our first album lineup. We have been doing shows since then with five of us from the first album. Mark Weitz, Randy Seol, George Bunnell, Gene Gunnels and Steve Bartek. Our new guy is Howie Anderson. He started playing with us in 1986. We actually started to rekindle SAC back in 1982. Lee Freeman, Ed King and Jimmy Pitman have all passed away sadly. Now it’s 2023 and we are almost done recording a new album. I think the first single might be a song of ours called Monsters. We are like brothers from different mothers. Connected by an extraordinary happenstance from 1967. We are currently hoping to raise enough funds through a GoFundMe campaign we just started.

You can find the link on our website: www.strawberryalarmclock.com