ACID INCENSE AND FUZZ
OVERLOOKED, UNDERRATED, SIDELINED AND DOWNPLAYED SIXTIES GUITAR HEROES PART 6: ZAL YANOVSKY
HE TWANGY GRANDEUR of Zal Yanovksy’s big guitar riff on the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “You Didn’t Have to Be So Nice” made it a Top 10 hit in the winter of 1965-’66. The track also caught the ear of Brian Wilson, inspiring him to write the Beach Boys’ classic “God Only Knows.” Another Spoonful hit, “Daydream,” influenced Paul McCartney as he was putting together the Beatles’ “Good Day Sunshine” from their groundbreaking 1966 album, Revolver.
In the mid Sixties, the Lovin’ Spoonful were one the most innovative and well-regarded bands around. Yanovsky’s whimsical, wild, wistful and weird guitar work was no small part of the quartet’s popularity. It was the sunshine in the band’s self-described “Good Time Music.” Sweet, weepy country licks, amped-up blues, fuzzed-out psychedelia.... Yanovsky’s broad stylistic range proved the perfect counterpoint to frontman John Sebastian’s wry, folksy songcraft, multi-instrumental palette and fine-tuned gift for pop melodicism.
Even in the non-conformist Sixties, Zalman Yanovsky stood out from the crowd, with his boho-hobo-cowboy fashion sense, clownish on-stage antics and the warped, wavy contours of his Guild S-200 Thunderbird. Like Zal himself, it was a guitar ahead of its time, complete with a “kickstand” built into the back body. If you were serious about rock guitar in the mid Sixties, Yanovsky is a guitarist you were serious about. He was an early adopter of the Thunderbird, and the broad range of tonal colors he could achieve with that guitar inspired Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen to get his own Thunderbird, which he played on the landmark psychedelic tracks “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love” from their 1967 album Surrealistic Pillow.
“[] was a great player, so of course I checked out his gear,” Kaukonen later recalled. “The T-Bird was one of the most different looking guitars I had ever seen… I also bought a] because Zal was playing through one.”
