This Coming Weekend: Prepare to Encounter “Brute Force”

Many folks I admire attended my talk at the Lambs last week; but I feel privileged to have gotten to know one of them a good deal better in the days since then. And I wish I’d managed to do so sooner. Like, decades sooner. I have a vague memory of having encountered him sometime before, many years ago. I have to believe it was at least when the internet was in a much more primitive stage of development, because I know that if I had explored the artist called “Brute Force” (Stephen Friedland) upon the original encounter I would have been every bit as obsessed and enthusiastic as I am now. (It’s conceivable I was turned off by his professional name. It conjures ugly visions, ones that aren’t descriptive of the man or his music at all.)

Brute Force’s biggest claim to fame was having been one of the select few who were personally signed by the Beatles for their then-new venture Apple Records in the late ’60s, placing him in such heady company as James Taylor,Badfinger, Hot Chocolate,Billy Preston, Mary Hopkin (“Those Were the Days”), Jackie Lomax (Harrison’s “Sour Milk Sea”), the Black Dyke Mills Band (McCartney’s “Thingumybob”), David Peel, the Radha Krishna Temple, et al. Brute Force’s amazing single was a song called “The King of Fuh”, whose central lyrical conceit is the repeated use of the phrase “Fuh King”, which of course sounds not only like a monarch of a Vietnamese soup franchise, but more immediately like the word “fucking”. The problem in 1968 of course is that that word was only just making its first tiny inroads into mainstream popular consciousness at the time. It was most definitely banned from radio (a necessary tool in record promotions back then). And so EMI/Capitol (which distributed Apple’s releases) refused to put the song out. Apple pressed one thousand copies of the single as a kind of limited release to industry folks and brave rogue DJs. It’s a highly sought and valuable collectible now. The song finally got a wider, official release on Come and Get It: The Best of Apple Records (2010). It’s a definite shame, though. If an aggressive advocate had gone to bat for him at the time, the song might have made a splash of the sort one associates with the likes of Lenny Bruce, Paul Krassner,The Fugs, and The National Lampoon Radio Hour.

But if Brute Force was just a one novelty-song Dr. Demento type artist (as good as that song is) I wouldn’t be so het up on the topic (not that I dislike novelty songs). Just prior to the mishigas with Apple, Friedland recorded an LP at Columbia called I, Brute Force — Confections of Love. Released in 1967, it will henceforth be included in my very short, very exclusive list of masterpieces from the era, along with Sgt. Pepper, the Beach Boys’ Smile, the Bonzos’ Gorilla, the Zombies’Oddyssey and Oracle, Love’s Forever Changes, and a few others. Psychedelic pop, with its pastiche of styles, surrealism, humor, and high ambition, has always been the summit for me. Sure I like vaudeville music, but I like it best in a package full of other surprises. And this is what Brute Force does. Comparisons are unfair but can be useful in communicating with the uninitiated. I’m reminded of people like Frank Zappa and Van Dyke Parks when I listen to Brute Force. And like Lou Reed, he came out of the Brill Building songwriting scene, so there are also echoes of Phil Spector style pop in there, that’s just wild to hear mixed in with such lyrical and musical invention and craziness. He derives a lot of humor from smashing together the sublime and the ridiculous, real soaring musical ideas expressing grotesque and crazy sentiments. I mentioned novelty songs earlier. I, Brute Force is like the masterpiece concept album you might make entirely out of novelty songs. It was produced by the legendary John Simon, who also produced  the Band’s Music from Big Pink, The Band, and The Last Waltz, Cheap Thrills by Big Brother & the Holding Company featuring Janis Joplin, Songs of Leonard Cohen; Child Is Father to the Man by Blood, Sweat & Tears, and Mama Cass’sDream a Little Dream of Me.

Friedland grew up in Jersey City and Asbury Park, and was the product of private school and piano lessons. At a certain point he dated a girl whose father was Billy Gussak, sometime drummer for Bill Haley and the Comets. Gussak set him on the path to professionalism. He got heavily involved with The Tokens, best known for their 1961 hit “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” as both a songwriter and keyboard player, also writing songs for The Chiffons, Del Shannon, and The Cyrkle, best known for their 1966 hit “Red Rubber Ball” (which had been produced by Simon, which is what led to Freidland’s debut LP). In an unrelated bit of synchronicity, the Chiffons would later sue Friedland’s benefactor George Harrison for plagiarism (“My Sweet Lord” sounding more than a little like “He’s So Fine”). (Stay tuned: George would be 80 this coming Saturday; I’ll be doing a new tribute here). Friedland’s big song with the Chiffons was “Nobody Knows What’s Goin’ On (In My Mind but Me)” (1965).

Friedland has written and recorded tons of music since those formative years; it’s going to take me some time to catch up with it all. In 2012 Ben Steinbauer made a documentary about him called Brute Force, the Movie as his follow up to Winnebago Man. That same year Friedland and “The King of Fuh” got mentioned in Martin Scorsese’s George Harrison: Living in the Material World. Friedland’s also appeared as a background actor in movies like Ghostbusters, Sea of Love, and Birdman and on shows like Law and Order and The Marvelous Mrs.Maisel.

Friedland presented a full length musical based on The Kind of Fuh at the Players Club in 2006. He also presented an open mic night at the Players for years, where performers like my old friend Gilda Konrad (a core member of my vaudeville show from 1998 to 2002 or so) performed. So she’s one of the connections I’m wondering brought me into contact with him years ago. Do I know from the Williamsburg scene of the late ’90s, where I hosted music shows at the Charleston Bar and Grill and the Williamsburg Art and Historical Center? Did I encounter him at Tony Bennett’s office, where I worked in the early ’90s (songwriters were in and out of there all the time). Did I meet him at that countercultural bastion Theater for the New City, where I worked 2007-2009 and sporadically afterwards? Did I encounter at Goodbye Blue Monday in more recent times?

Anyway, not far from where Goodbye Blue Monday used to be, on the Ridgewood/ Bushwick border (Brooklyn/Queens no man’s land) is a club called TV Eye, where contemporary friends and colleagues like Anna Copa Cabanna often perform, and that’s where you can catch this psychedelic Victor Borge this coming Sunday, February 26. I hope you are sufficiently intrigued to investigate this rare event. There will be a dance party featuring his singles, following the concert. I’m going to go if I can! This is history! More tickets and info here.