#oh and managing to avoid getting drafted into the Vietnam war

[janiedean]

fic, steve/bucky: a trotskyist baker in the rome of the seventies (light r, 100% crack)

....... OKAY GUYS I PROMISED @electricalice​ THIS DAMNED THING YEARS AGO AND I HAVE A FEELING NO ONE WHO DOESN’T HAVE AN IN-DEPTH KNOWLEDGE OF EITHER ITALIAN POLITICS/CULTURE OR NANNI MORETTI’S MOVIES WILL GET WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE so: if you wanna read a fic where bucky’s a trotskyist baker in rome in the seventies and steve is the local knife-sharpener this is your thing, if not... just skip. MARTINA I MADE YOU WAIT A LOT BUT I HOPE IT’S FUNNY AT LEAST XDDDD (rated r for light sexual content and horrible puns about cannoli.)

È arrivato l'arrotino! Arrota coltelli, forbici, forbicine, forbici da seta, coltelli da prosciutto!

Donne è arrivato l'arrotino e l'ombrellaio; aggiustiamo gli ombrelli; l'ombrellaio, donne -

“Oh, shit, I’m going to murder that son of a bitch,” Bucky groans as he sits up in his bed, not even trying to turn on his side and go back to sleep - there’s no way. He knows how that fucking business works. The motherfucker is going to circle his building some three times, because of course someone is going to want to have their kitchen knives sharpened at seven thirty in the fucking morning on August 15th in fucking Rome, as he does every damned time.

Damn it. Who the fuck is up in that trap of a car with a megaphone on a fucking Sunday morning? At seven thirty? Maybe if he had actually went to sleep at a reasonable hour he might have taken that a lot better, but he hasn’t.

Fine, fine, it’s also his fault because just an idiot could have stayed up baking pastries up until three in the morning just to realize that the following day was a national holiday, and he’s lived in this country for years by now, maybe he should have remembered it. Except that he had forgotten, so now he has a closed shop full of cakes and pastries half of which will spoil before tomorrow, he has barely slept three hours since he dragged himself back home, and now - now the fucking knife grinder is waking him up at the crack of dawn on a Sunday.

For the umpteenth time.

Fuck this, he decides, he’s going to go downstairs and if he manages to talk himself out of murdering the bastard he’ll give him a piece of his mind. After all ten years here did do wonders in teaching him a fair number of colorful insults, and while he’s been told his accent still shows, he’s sure he can do a plenty good job of terrorizing the idiot into going to some other area next week. Or at least into showing up at a normal time. Possibly not at seven thirty in the morning, for starters.

He puts on the old pair of jeans he had on yesterday evening and a pair of sandals he bought at the last festa dell’Unità, and he doesn’t even bother putting on his shirt. People are usually put off by the metal prosthesis, and sometimes he’s still fairly self-conscious about it even if it’s been years since he left the American military, good riddance, but he’s too angry to care. Also he wants the fucker to be put off, anyway.

Ripariamo cucine a gas: abbiamo i pezzi di ricambio per le cucine a gas. Se avete perdite di gas noi le aggiustiamo, se la cucina fa fumo noi togliamo il fumo della vostra cucina a gas.

For fuck’s sake, Bucky thinks as he grabs his keys, slams the door closed and runs down the stairs in a flurry of righteous rage, my kitchen is electric. It’s the seventies, goddammit, who even owns a gas kitchen anymore? Okay, fine, maybe in some small town, but this is hardly a small town, is it?

Good thing he lives on the second floor. He follows the sound - it’s pretty damn loud, so the guy has to have parked somewhere around. It takes him a moment to locate the car. Which is clearly parked in front of his shop - he thinks the universe is trying to tell him something today and he’s not sure he likes it.

Well then. He’s downstairs now, and he’s slammed the door on his way out, and he’s very glad to verify that the car is, in fact, really in front of his shop. He spares a moment to notice that the knife-grinder in question has to be really desperate, or he wouldn’t be driving some old red 126 Fiat that’s probably not been in production for years which is even more battered than Bucky’s own. And Bucky had thought that his thrice-used VAZ-2104 couldn’t be beaten when it came to cars that had seen better days. Never mind that no one with some sense of mind would use a fucking 126 to bring knife-sharpening tools. At least a small truck.

Whatever. The fact that this idiot can’t even grasp the basic of being a knife-sharpener isn’t his the point.

Now, the point is that he needs the idiot to understand once and for all that he’s not welcome (not at this time at least) and he’s been living in this city long enough to master quite some of the local swearing. Not half as much as he wishes he could - because he’s heard some seriously fine swears he still hasn’t been able to quite replicate in all the times he’s been here. Still, enough. He hasn’t completely lost his accent, but usually whenever he demonstrates his more than fairly accurate grasp of the art, locals tend to at least respect him some.

So he’s going to do just that, show this idiot how much this is not Bucky’s day and then he’s going to try and go to sleep again - yeah, fat chance of that.

“Ma all’anima de li mortacci tua, c’avevi proprio bisogno di buttare la gente giù dar letto alle sette de mattina o è che devi esse stronzo a tutti i costi?”

Now, Bucky’s angry, all right, and he knows he can’t be looking very friendly right now. Metal arm regardless, and face of someone-who-was-in-the-military regardless, he was just thrown out of bed earlier than nine in the morning on a festive day, he knows he must look murderous. That’s perfectly fine as far as he’s concerned. He did want to give the guy the scare of his life, which is why he had been striding towards the 126 without hiding his arm or the horrible state of his hair or his absolute lack of fashion - not that he’s that great at it, but when he’s just woken up and has barely dressed, it tends to show.

Too bad that the moment he’s face to face with the infamous arrotino, the one thing he can think of is, shit he’s cute.

For one, he definitely doesn’t look local -- not many people around here have natural blonde hair and blue eyes, but this guy does, and fine, he’s a good head shorter than Bucky and he’s kind of scrawny, it’s obvious from what he can see under the hoodie he’s wearing (with this weather? Who does that even?) over a pair of slacks that have seen better days. But, no one has ever said that Bucky was not into scrawny guys, even if the last time he hit on one he was still in Vietnam and still had an arm, and his rage kind of maybe melts a bit when the other man makes an apologetic face as Bucky comes his way, as if he knows that he’s in the wrong here.

And that makes Bucky stop dead in his tracks enough that he almost trips into the goddamned sampietrino under his feet -- he does love this city but damn if he doesn’t hate its streets’ pavement.

“Er,” the knife-grinder sputters, apologetically, “mi scusi, immagino che --”

“Wait a fucking moment,” Bucky interrupts him, immediately recognizing the accent. Like, he speaks Italian perfectly and without a hitch, but he can fucking hear an accent when he hears one, and this specific kind of is one he really can’t forget anytime soon, “are you from Brooklyn?”

The knife-grinder’s blue eyes go very, very wide.

“How - well, uh, sort of,” he says, “wait, are you?”

“I asked first and you woke me up,” Bucky says, feeling slightly calmer, and wait, how long had it been since he talked in English to anyone?

“Fair,” knife-grinder says. “Uh, I’m Steve. And like, I actually was born here, but my mother was from Brooklyn. She came here with the Red Cross during the war, fell for an Italian soldier and never quite left. Also, uh, let’s say my health’s never been the best, so she figured I was better off here. But I’ve been there a few times. And she taught me the language, obviously. I suppose it wasn’t your experience, was it?”

“Uh, no,” Bucky shakes his head. “I was born there, no fancy foreign parents. Then I got drafted to Vietnam, lost an arm, decided I was done with whoever decided to send me to get slaughtered even if sure as fuck the communists never forced me to go anywhere, picked somewhere at random to relocate and here I am. Well, fine, I figured I could do with some sun and decent food,” he shrugs. “Uh, I’m Bucky.”

“Short for what?”

He shrugs. “They named me James Buchanan, and everyone else was named James in elementary school. And anyway, that’s no car for knife-grinding.”

Steve shrugs sheepishly. “What can I say,” he answers, “it’s a living and I can’t do better right now. Also, sorry for waking you up, but these are the standard hours.”

“You know people would be more inclined to let you grind their knives if you didn’t wake them up at fuck in the morning?”

“... Yeah, well, fair enough, but I’m not my own boss. Not that going around now was a good idea in the first place.”

“How so? Because, oh, wait, it’s a vacation?”

He has the grace to look at least apologetic. “Yes. The boss isn’t exactly understanding, though. He surely isn’t not going to Ostia to drive around getting a sunstroke and offering knife-sharpening to people who aren’t even home.”

Bucky thinks he does like the edge to that tone. “And how is that knife-sharpening going for you?”

Steve shrugs. “Not too great. Then again, still better than trying to be an artist without having gone to the academy. But I do portraits in Piazza Navona once in a while.”

Bucky glances down at Steve’s hands. They have long fingers. They also look rough, and stained under the tips, but then again if he sharpens knives when he’s not drawing or painting or whatever, that’d be understandable.

“Anyway,” Steve says, “sorry for waking you up. Honest, if it was for me I’d have avoided this one trip, but what can I do.”

“Well,” Bucky says, “not like I’m going back to sleep anytime soon, but for what it’s worth, sorry for the outburst. I went to sleep late.”

“I get it,” Steve says, and then his stomach makes a noise.

“Am I wrong or you skipped breakfast?” Bucky asks.

Steve shrugs again. “I shouldn’t,” he says, “but I woke up early, I didn’t feel like it and now I’m regretting it, I guess.”

Bucky thinks, do I really want to ask him if --?

He hasn’t really done this for a very long time. But then again, he also tends to not mingle with anyone that’s not from the local PCI section, and Steve hasn’t run away at the sight of his very shirtless self when just having woken up, with hair not even combed and in his worst mood.

At worst he can make a friend, he supposes.

“Listen,” he says, “let’s say that having lived here for years I still forget most of the local holidays, which is the reason why I went to sleep at fucking three AM yesterday.”

“Wait, because you worked?”

Bucky nods toward the shop. Steve’s eyes go wide as he reads the sign. The rough translation would be equal pastries, but he figures Steve wouldn’t need it.

“You’re a --”

“Baker? Yeah,” Bucky shrugs. “I figured that I’d go into something that was the entire contrary of, y’know, being in the military. Anyway, I’ve got the shop full of pastries and no one’s eating them today, so if you want a not-so-late breakfast, since it’s fucking fifteen to eight AM, feel free.”

Steve stares at him for a long moment, but then he shrugs after checking his watch.

“You know what, fuck that noise. I’ll take the pastry. Let me just close this.” He locks the 126 up and follows Bucky towards the shop -

Just to crash into that same broken sampietrino that had almost killed Bucky before. Bucky reaches out and grabs his arm to avoid a fairly bad crash to the ground, steadying him on his feet. He can’t help noticing that scrawny as he is, Steve does have some muscle on him, and he tries to not let show that he did notice as he lets his arm go.

“Mind it,” he says. “Those things are a death trap.”

“I know,” Steve sighs. “Thanks. I love this city but don’t I hate them.”

“Doesn’t everyone?” Bucky smirks, and grabs his keys. He tells Steve to wait for him to put on a shirt, runs upstairs, puts on the first tank top he can find in his closet (red, of course, but at least it doesn’t have any embarrassing print on it), and then he runs back downstairs after putting his hair in a bun, at least he looks somewhat more presentable.

“Right,” he says, “follow me.” He leads Steve to the back entrance of the shop and opens it, and he kind of can’t help grinning as he sees Steve’s blue eyes widen the moment he sees how many damned pastries he had baked the night before.

“Holy shit,” he says, “I see why you might have gone to bed late.”

“Yeah, well, I should’ve checked the calendar. Anyway, there’s pastries, there’s cakes, there’s more cannoli than I could have bothered with and those are definitely spoiling before tomorrow, just have your pick.”

“Hm,” Steve says, “maybe -”

Then he stops as he stares at the picture hung above Bucky’s cash machine.

“Let me guess,” Steve says, slowly. “This place is named equality pastries also because you’re the only baker in this town with a picture of Trotsky hung up on the wall, or am I wrong?”

Bucky can’t help grinning slightly as he puts his elbows on the counter right next to the machine, staring straight at Steve in the eyes. “Why,” he says, “do you have anything in common against the concept of permanent revolution?”

“Oh,” Steve says, “I see you also read Trotsky.”

“‘Course I did,” Bucky says. “Hey, I was born in the same country as McCarthy, doesn’t mean I have to agree with his extremely wrong takes on communism. And I think I’m done with not checking for myself anything first.”

“Fair,” Steve says, “but as far as I’m concerned, it’s a bit utopian.”

“What, the concept of permanent revolution?”

“Nice,” Steve replies, “but utopian. I mean, come on, Marx and Engels made pretty clear that communism can’t exactly work anywhere unless society is ripe for it, and if you ask me, nowhere actually is. Still, their analysis is still spot-on.”

“So what,” Bucky quips back, “you’re the purist kind of comrade?”

“It’s not being a purist,” Steve protests. “I’m just realistic. Though admittedly, if I had to pick one, your guy is almost the least bad choice.”

“Almost? Please don’t tell me that Stalin’s the least bad.”

“What? You fucking kidding me? Marx never advocated for that bullshit.”

“Hey, every other person ‘round here is on that side, especially at the local section. Can’t even try to argue about it.”

“Yeah, well, fair. Same in mine. What can we do, right?”

“Okay,” Bucky says, “but now other than telling me what you want to eat I’d like to know who is the least bad person who tried to make communism a reality and how can you even be around in a hoodie with this weather.”

“You know what,” Steve says, “I’ll go for the cannolo.”

“You can have two, you know,” Bucky says, taking a couple from the display cabinet and handing them over to Steve. Steve takes one and bites down on it, and a moment later he makes a sound that kind of sounds like a few porn movies Bucky’s seen recently.

Well, good to know his cannoli are appreciated.

“Fuck,” he says, “these are good.” He swallows another half, then puts the pastry on the counter. “Well, I’ll finish it in a moment, but let’s just say that I tend to feel cold. As a predisposition. And it was cold-ish this morning, when I left. That’s why I’m wearing the hoodie. About the least bad…” He grins, opens the hoodie and reveals a bright red t-shirt with Che Guevara’s face printed in black all over it. “I mean, at least he did try without profiting from the first victory,” he says, and then grabs the cannolo again, eating a third piece.

Bucky’s mouth has probably gone a lot drier just watching it happen.

Christ, he needs to get a grip here - he reaches out, grabs a cannolo for himself and takes a bite. Okay, right, this batch came out pretty good, but then again never say that Bucky Barnes couldn’t do anything he really set his mind to, including baking damn good pastries.

“I think,” he says, “I can compromise on your guy.” He can feel that some filling stayed on the corner of his mouth - he licks it off, noticing that Steve’s eyes are staring at his tongue.

Huh.

Maybe - maybe he could actually give it a go.

“Say,” he keeps on, “would your boss even care if you were late on schedule?”

Steve swallows the last of his cannolo, reaching for the second one. “My boss only knows when I come in and leave because he’s lending me the machinery to sharpen the damned things. Why?”

“Because you know that you won’t sharpen any knives today.”

“I knew that the moment I left home. Tell me something I don’t.”

“Well, my apartment is upstairs. Instead of standing here like two idiots, we could bring some of the other cannoli upstairs, share them while sitting down and if you wanna discuss why you don’t think permanent revolution is a feasible concept, I’m all ears to be convinced.”

“You know what,” Steve says, “suddenly the idea of sharing cannoli with you sounds good. And I think I have fairly good arguments as for why permanent revolution is not feasible whatsoever.”

Bucky grins at him, staring at the filling that is now staining Steve’s mouth.

“Then do follow me, comrade. Can’t wait to hear all about it.”

Turns out: the concept of discussing permanent revolution is very quickly abandoned in favor of Bucky licking that filling off Steve’s mouth.

Turns out, Steve might be scrawny but he definitely likes driving the show, which is Bucky’s favorite combination albeit more rare than he likes, which means that fifteen minutes later all his carefully crafted cannolis they brought upstairs have been eaten or are adorning Bucky’s bed or skin in various states of destruction.

Which is entirely fine with Bucky.

No, really, especially if Steve wants to eat that ricotta filling off his chest. He also doesn’t seem to mind the prosthesis at all, and by the time Bucky’s come thrice and Steve twice and they’re laying next to each other on the bed, the sheets dirtied with both cannoli remains and their own come, Steve breathing like he’s run a marathon with his cheeks flushed in a frankly adorable way, Bucky has decided that there’s no bloody way this is over here.

“Say,” Bucky breathes, “would you mind leaving me a number in case I need someone to, hm, sharpen my knives?”

Steve groans, hiding his face in the pillow before moving closer to him again, his arm going around Bucky’s waist as he uses his elbow for leverage and moves on top of him again. “I don’t know,” Steve says, “I just might, but I’d be devastated if you only needed me for my knife-sharpening skills.”

“Well,” Bucky retorts, “if you’re half as good as that as you are at sucking dick, I think you’d have half of this city outside your car.”

“Damn, and here I thought that my best skills were at convincing people of the uselessness of having a communist government if it’s just fascism in disguise.”

“Oh, you’re pretty good at that, too, but I still think I want to know more in details why you’re so against the concept of permanent revolution.”

“Do I get more pastries in exchange?”

Bucky doesn’t think he’s grinned at someone this hard in ages.

“You can have your fill downstairs. Unless you want more now.”

Steve licks his lips, his hand going to Bucky’s dick, which is still twitching in interest even if he’s completely spent, but hey, it’s been a hell of a long time.

“And what if I want both?”

“Take it,” Bucky tells him, and a moment later Steve’s moved downwards, his mouth taking him in again as Bucky grasps at the sheets.

Fuck. He’s definitely never ever complaining about the unholy times the kinfe-sharpener shows up, even if he has a feeling he’s never going to look for a different one.

And if Steve wants to go downstairs and try some more pastries, well, the shop is closed until tomorrow, after all.

End.

[toptecharena]

NEW YORK — During the summer of 1966, a heat wave boiled New York City at the most brutal temperatures recorded since 1869, the year weather data began to be consistently collected.

The Vietnam War was also heating up, with 382,010 men drafted into service that year, 151,019 more than the previous year.

Opposition to the war as well as to chronic discrimination against blacks, women and gays was gathering steam in the city. Clashes broke out elsewhere, with race riots that summer in Chicago and in Lansing, Michigan.

“America was convulsing in a way, a time of huge unrest, incredible violence,” said Jon Savage, author of “1966: The Year the Decade Exploded.”

On Aug. 1, in Austin, Texas, a lone gunman introduced the United States to mass murder. Charles Whitman killed his mother and wife and then more than a dozen people, sniper-style, from the University of Texas’ clock tower, wounding more than 30 others.

Meanwhile, “Summer in the City,” a propulsive, apolitical rock song by the Lovin’ Spoonful, based in New York, was climbing the charts to No. 1, reassuring listeners that “despite the heat it’ll be all right.” Sung and co-written by John Sebastian, the band’s frontman, the song was conceived by his younger brother, Mark Sebastian, when he was just 14. Steve Boone, the bass player, contributed the memorable instrumental interlude. The three shared writing credit and continue to reap royalties: The song has endured as an anthem for every heat wave since and has been covered by Quincy Jones, Joe Cocker and Isaac Hayes, among others.

(It will most likely figure prominently at a concert, “Music and Revolution: Greenwich Village in the 1960s,” on Sunday at Central Park’s SummerStage, where John Sebastian is part of a lineup that includes José Feliciano and Maria Muldaur.)

In addition to John Sebastian and Boone, the original band members (Mark was too young) were Zal Yanovsky on guitar and Joe Butler on drums. Their producer, Erik Jacobsen, helped shape their 1965 debut album, “Do You Believe in Magic,” and their 1966 follow-up album, “Daydream.” Their manager, Bob Cavallo, masterminded the business end. In 1966, the group also supplied the soundtrack to Woody Allen’s “What’s Up, Tiger Lily?” They toured extensively and, with their rapid rise to fame, found themselves in need of more material. One day, Sebastian heard something intriguing from his younger brother.

JOHN SEBASTIAN (frontman): Mark really was the beginning of the song. Hot town, summer in the city … but at night it’s a different world. “Hey, hold on, what’s that?” I said.

MARK SEBASTIAN (songwriter): I recently found the songbook I wrote it in, in pencil. My brother, who’d moved out by then, was back home visiting and listened to what I’d written.

__

The song soon became a contender for the band’s next album, which they were under pressure to produce quickly. “Cavallo had us on the road so much that we never had the luxury of dedicated periods of recording,” said Steve Boone, the bass player. By March 1966, just a few months after wrapping “Daydream,” they were back in the studio to record what would become “Hums of the Lovin’ Spoonful,” which would feature “Summer in the City.” From the beginning, the band was excited about the single’s potential, no matter that it began with a dreamy adolescent longing to break out of his family’s tony residence, tucked between Macdougal Street and Waverly Place.

__

MARK SEBASTIAN: Our family’s apartment was at 29 Washington Square West, the 15th floor; my bedroom looked out over the Hudson. I wanted to run away, go down by the docks, dreaming of whatever this romance thing was, having a band of my own. There was all this music out in Washington Square Park, girls that came down from the Bronx, really sexy, chewing gum, and I was still too young to talk to them without fainting.

JOHN SEBASTIAN: Eleanor Roosevelt lived across the hall in the 1940s when we first moved in. My mom, Jane Bishir, was a Midwestern girl who’d come to New York to make it as a writer and became the closest of friends with Vivian Vance long before she was on “I Love Lucy.” She was my godmother. My godfather was the best baby sitter on God’s green earth, Garth Williams, the illustrator for all these wonderful books. He would be doodling, and there was one evening where he showed me three or four spiders: “Which spider do you like?” He and E.B. White were going around the bend to avoid the Disneyfication of “Charlotte’s Web,” and he wanted to try it out on a kid. My dad was a classical harmonica player and good friends with Burl Ives, who asked him if we could let this songwriter from Oklahoma stay at our house for a while. So I’m in bed, and in the next room I hear Woody Guthrie singing and playing, and in my total infancy I thought, “He’s not as good as Dad.” It’s not a memory I’m proud of.

STEVE BOONE (bass guitarist): John not only grew up in Greenwich Village, he was there when folk musicians and bands started writing their own songs and actually playing their instruments on the recordings. In the ‘50s and early ‘60s, record companies would hire songwriters and studio musicians, and the artists would come in and sing. The rock scene began with this gestation period in the Village.

__

John Sebastian was steeped in a rivalrous fraternity of folk, roots, blues and jug-band artists at coffeehouses and basement hangouts on West Third, Macdougal and Bleecker streets. He saw the careers of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Jimmy James (later known as Jimi Hendrix) and the Blue Flames take off from cramped stages. Playing harmonica, guitar and autoharp, he began to accompany a variety of artists, influences that bore fruit when he turned to songwriting.

Sebastian’s friend Cass Elliot introduced him to Yanovsky, a Canadian who played in her folk group, the Mugwumps, along with Denny Doherty. After they split up, Elliot and Doherty co-founded the Mamas and the Papas while Sebastian and Yanovsky formed the Lovin’ Spoonful, taking their name from a Mississippi John Hurt song, “Coffee Blues.”

In February 1965, their tryout at the Night Owl Cafe, formerly at 118 W. Third St., was a disaster. Joe Marra, the club’s owner, now 85, was known for presenting the likes of Tim Hardin, Fred Neil, Tim Buckley, Stephen Stills, Richie Havens and James Taylor. He gave Cass Elliot a job as a hostess.

__

JOHN SEBASTIAN: We got fired.

JOE BUTLER (drummer): We were living in the same room at the Albert Hotel, the four of us in the same goddamn bed, a laundry cart with all our instruments. We’d roll it down to the basement to rehearse, water bugs running around.

SEBASTIAN: I had an apartment, but maybe I’d end up there overnight now and then. It’s where I wrote “Do You Believe in Magic.”

BUTLER: The Paul Butterfield Blues Band rehearsed in the ballroom. A lot of musicians were living in that place on the sly. So were Denny and Cass, who were still with the Mugwumps. Basically, Denny was romancing the manager, so he was our meal ticket. We had a secret entrance, hiding in rooms, and never paid. I was just out of the Air Force, my father was a cop, and I grew up in Great Neck, so I wasn’t as bohemian as they were. I was 23, the oldest in the group. If you were lucky, you got to sleep on the floor in Butchie’s room.

BOONE: Butchie was the Lovin’ Spoonful’s stepmother at the hotel, funny, cheerful, encouraging. I wrote “Butchie’s Tune” for her, how she was the greatest, but I wasn’t attracted to her.

SEBASTIAN: She was a pal of my producer who overheard me talking about the draft, how I was the right age to get taken. She said, “Oh, I’ll marry you.” It was a technical marriage. She ended up marrying Bob Denver.

JOSHUA WHITE (pioneer of psychedelic light shows): We were getting deeper and deeper into Vietnam. Everyone, including the Lovin’ Spoonful, was subject to the draft, and you were going to die, your life under that dangling sword. People were doing all kinds of things to better their chances — getting married, having children, becoming teachers, looking over their shoulders.

SEBASTIAN: We immediately got into Cafe Bizarre, a tourist trap. We did eight sets a day for $25 a week and all the tuna fish sandwiches you could eat. Joe Marra gave us another shot at the Night Owl, and we were ecstatic when we saw a 16-year-old girl from Queens dancing to our music. The next week a ton of girls showed up.

JON SAVAGE (“1966” author): There was magic between the four of them, and Zal Yanovsky was the wild card. You always need a wild card, somebody who’s going to rip it up. London was over, everybody knew that, and New York became the pop center of the world, strong with the Lovin’ Spoonful and the Rascals, the Brill Building not dead yet.

BUTLER: I was fascinated by Zally. Harpo Marx with a guitar, a genius who could play anything.

ZOE YANOVSKY (Zal Yanovsky’s daughter): Zalman was a bit of a street urchin, somewhat homeless, and had roamed around Israel playing guitar. There’s a mythical story about him coming back to Toronto and living in a laundromat before going to New York.

GERRY GIOIA (guitarist and composer): When I played in the Village back then I’d get $10, but that would buy you 10 pizzas. Music was everywhere, street performers, smells of sausage heroes, coffee beans, people walking up and down the streets trying to look as freaky as possible. It was like Paris in the ‘20s, the Harlem Renaissance, things that come and go, and you don’t realize it until it’s gone.

GENE SCULATTI (author of “Tryin’ to Tell a Stranger ‘Bout Rock and Roll”): The Lovin’ Spoonful and the Byrds were the first of the groups that really comprised hipsters, ex-folkies and dope smokers. When you first saw them, they were like the Rolling Stones, dressed in street clothes, not uniforms.

__

In late 1965, the Lovin’ Spoonful toured the South with the Supremes, chronicled in Steve Boone’s memoir, “Hotter Than a Match Head: Life on the Run with the Lovin’ Spoonful” (2014). They were taunted for having long hair and witnessed naked racism. “Segregation was supposed to be over,” Butler said, “but Zally was out there, animated and loud, and guys started coming for us, saying, ‘Should we shave their heads?’” People at a diner started using racist jeers. “Zally grabbed a fork, ready to take somebody’s eye out so he’d never forget what he said to us that day.”

The band toured overseas, and on May 20, 1966, after triumphant gigs in England, Sweden and Ireland, rubbing elbows with the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, Yanovsky and Boone were arrested in San Francisco for marijuana possession.

__

BOONE: We hadn’t even gone a block from the house where the party was, and they immediately wanted to search the car. It may have been a setup. The chief of police said he’d put Zally on a plane to Canada tomorrow, not be allowed back in. We were young and scared and made a deal to introduce a cop as a friend of ours to our crowd. I wish we had said, “See you in court.”

__

The bust did not immediately make the news, and the band went on to perform in Los Angeles and on various television shows. In July, “Summer in the City” was released, a song recorded before they left for Europe.

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MARK SEBASTIAN: That summer, I was in the Loire with my mom dragging me around to châteaus. I wanted to be in New York and hear “Summer in the City” playing from the window. My mom rented a radio. I heard “I Want You” from Dylan, then started to hear my song. I was in shock. What I’d written was more of a mellow ballad, and John took it to this whole other place that was aggressive and exciting and fun.

ERIK JACOBSEN (producer): We had Roy Halee, a fabulous engineer at Columbia, put in these sound effects of a drill and traffic and a legitimate big-time fade at the end.

BOONE: Until “Summer in the City,” we were not accepted wholeheartedly by the rock scene.

BUTLER: And we were playing our own instruments, not using the Wrecking Crew like the Byrds and the Beach Boys.

JOHN SEBASTIAN: There was no love lost between us and rock critics.

BOONE: That song changed everything. We had street cred. It was really also the end of the Spoonful, the tipping point. From that point on, there was this tiny pinhole in the balloon that started leaking.

SAVAGE: “Summer in the City” is almost an avant-garde piece, that stuttering piano, the noises of the city in the middle. It’s an edgy record, not a peaceful record. It was their fifth Top 10 single in under a year. They were on an insane schedule.

BUTLER: We were designed to burn out, like a light bulb that was overamped. We were on the road all the time, and our heads got swelled up with how popular we were and how much the girls loved us. We were unable to support each other.

SAVAGE: Within two years, they released at least three full albums, two soundtrack albums and had nine Top 20 singles. It’s not surprising relationships fracture under that pressure. How are you going to keep it up?

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As much as Boone and Butler professed their love and admiration for Yanovsky, they noticed his mood darken after the drug arrest. During that period, Jacobsen described him as “an impossible guy capable of guerrilla warfare.” There was also a love interest — isn’t there always? — that got in the way. In 1967, it came to a head.

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BOONE: Zally quit the band emotionally and then got fired. It was well after “Summer” was a hit record that anybody even knew about the drug bust. It got out in the underground press in California.

SAVAGE: Their name was mud for fingering their source. It was a great shame that young people were put under that kind of pressure for making a mistake. They were very badly advised and intimidated by the police.

ZOE YANOVSKY: Zalman may have had a certain element of self-sabotage. On “The Ed Sullivan Show,” he purposefully sang the wrong lyrics. But those are the great partnerships in life and in rock ‘n’ roll, opposites attracting. John is very sincere, and Zalman was very much in your face.

SAVAGE: Once the band lost Zal, it became something different. Los Angeles, and in particular, San Francisco, was positioning itself as the next center of pop.

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Yanovsky released a solo album, “Alive and Well in Argentina,” drove a cab in Toronto and became a restaurateur in Kingston, Ontario. He died of a heart attack in 2002, just shy of his 58th birthday.

Richard Barone, a musician who released the album “Sorrows & Promises: Greenwich Village in the 1960s” in 2016, and is hosting Sunday’s SummerStage show dedicated to the era, said that by 1968, “Greenwich Village was over, a commercial commodity.”

John Sebastian, 74, quit the Lovin’ Spoonful in 1968 to go solo, and he played an unscheduled set at Woodstock in 1969. “I’ve gone in and out of style five times since then,” he said. On a recent visit from Woodstock, where he has lived with his wife, Catherine, since 1976, he retraced his old Village route, more exuberant about the memories than wistful. “It’s all gone,” he said, “but so are the crooners. Everybody has their turn. When did I leave? The real answer is I’ll never leave the Village. It’s mine.”

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New York Summer Songs

John Schaefer, the host of “New Sounds” on WNYC, shares his selection. Here are six of them; the full list is at nytimes.com/metropolitan.

— “Dancing in the Streets” by Martha and the Vandellas. Detroit can rightly claim this ultimate summer song, but the lyrics are more inclusive: “They’re dancing in Chicago/ Down in New Orleans/ In New York City.”

— “Up on the Roof” by the Drifters. From the songwriting team of Carole King and Gerry Goffin, this classic’s lyrics never actually mention “summer in New York,” but with its “rat race noise down in the street” and its rooftop air so “fresh and sweet,” it’s got to be.

— “Summertime” by DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince. Jazzy Jeff and a young Will Smith were not New Yorkers, but this 1991 tune is built on “Summer Madness,” from Jersey City’s own Kool & the Gang.

— “Crazy in Love” by Beyoncé, featuring Jay-Z. The king and queen of New York ruled summer 2003 with this sweaty, Chi-Lites-sampling dance tune.

— “Rockaway Beach” by the Ramones. Because even punks need a break from being cool to be, you know, cool.

— “Bang Bang” by Joe Cuba. The tradition of great Latin summer hits includes last year’s “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi, “Gasolina” by Daddy Yankee in 2004 and any number of Fania All-Stars tunes from the ‘70s. But it all began in New York in 1966, with this irresistible number.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Julie Besonen © 2018 The New York Times

Go to Source Author: Julie Besonen Entertainment: An anthem for every urban summer NEW YORK — During the summer of 1966, a heat wave boiled New York City at the most brutal temperatures recorded since 1869, the year weather data began to be consistently collected.