A Conversation with P.F. Sloan – HuffPost 7.23.14

Mike Ragogna: There’s so much to talk about Phil but let’s start out with your new album, My Beethoven. So how far back do you and Beethoven go?

P.F. Sloan: It looks like about eighteen years, now, if you can believe that.

MR: What’s the story? How did you discover him?

PFS: It was “grace,” really. I was pretty burned out on music, nothing really coming out on the air and bands weren’t really doing anything for me. This lady just serendipitously got two tickets for the Philharmonic for an evening of Beethoven and she invited me and that changed everything for me.

MR: What was your approach like to recording it?

PFS: I was going through some issues of anxiety and depression, so two things attracted me right off. One was that he was considered a Mozart wannabe his whole life long and I’m considered to be a Bob Dylan wannabe. I found that inside of his life story there are things that are very similar to what I was going through. I also wanted to know why he didn’t kill himself. It took a lot of time. He was planning on committing suicide not because he was depressed but because he felt that he was doing a rectification to God, as though God had made a mistake. I needed to know what is it that he discovered that made him continue to want to live with the handicap that he had. That was the beginning of the song “My Beethoven Canto.” That song is one of the most important things I’ve ever written for myself. I uncovered layers of bulls**t of poetry within myself. It took so much persistence and strength to get rid of that bulls**t so that I could finally arrive at a very simple truth for the song.

MR: The album features tracks like “Joy To The Ninth,” a piece on Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which is one of his most controversial. What resonated about the ninth with you? Was it supposedly based on one of the popular drinking songs?

PFS: It wasn’t one of his drinking songs, but Louie really spent a lot of time in the bars playing piano and drinking. It was basically one of the most famous drinking songs in Vienna. The fact that he worked on that piece for twenty years until he finally composed it and when it was first played The Vienna Times said, “This is just a drinking song! What are we supposed to like here?” and it was considered again a disaster. The opportunity was that Beethoven was abused as a child and I happen to have been abused as a child as well. I needed a way to find out how Louie actually dealt with child abuse in his life. I was able to uncover in two lines all of the pain and angst that I went through being beaten as a young kid. I think that spoke for Ludwig as well.

MR: What do you think of his impact? He’s one of the most important figures in musical history even though–you phrased it before as a Mozart wannabe?

PFS: Yes. He only had two hits. One was a temporary hit, which played sort of on the Vienna Broadway. The other was the Sixth Symphony. Basically, he really never got out of Mozart’s shadow in Vienna.

MR: But what do you think of his impact now? It seems his music doesn’t only resonate with you but also with generations…centuries of people.

PFS: What a beautiful, beautiful question. It resonates with truth. The music resonates like a tuning fork to whatever we call the essence of the harmony of our being. It resonates. There are no extra notes, there are no frills, there’s nothing there that doesn’t need to be. It’s the skeletal muscles and the heart of a human being. It resonates. For me, all these other composers–and everyone’s entitled to love who they love–seem to have a lot of fluff. They don’t seem to be able to finish a sentence. He resonates with beauty, is really what it is, and beauty is what stirred in my soul.

MR: Beautiful. Philip, you also wrote Barry McGuire’s hit “Eve Of Destruction.” You added the line, “You’re old enough to kill but not for voting,” that ended up being a rallying cry that helped change the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen. That’s a nice accomplishment.

PFS: You know what I liked about it? Wow, I mean, Mike, I’m nineteen years old and apparently, I have a fairly sharp intellect happening, and using that in a way that was inescapable; that’s what I felt that line was. In other words, if you’re going to debate it I felt that it was inescapable. There’s no way to debate against that, and you knew it had to change.

MR: Sweet. Did you ever take on a project like your latest with as much enthusiasm before?

PFS: No. This is nothing that I’ve ever thought was possible. This was as close to insanity as you can get. The reason it’s insane is because I worked on this project for fifteen years, writing, re-writing, recording, buying instruments, setting it all up myself, doing it all myself. It was just crazy, and I knew it, but I knew that I was reaching some space within my pop soul that was resonating with beauty. That, to me, is the culmination of it. Pop music’s been my life and I see Ludwig Van Beethoven as a pop artist of his time.

MR: And he was a two-hit wonder of his time.

PFS: Yeah, he had this one other hit called something about Wellington [“Wellington’s Victory,”] it’s in the second song and the reason it came about was he had gotten such a terrible bar bill that this producer cornered him and said, “I’ll pay for your bar bill if you’ll write the music to this play that I’ve written about the Duke of Wellington winning over Napoleon. Louie, basically, said, “Yeah, okay, if you’ll pay the bar bill for the next year as well,” and the guy said, “Okay.” So Louie wrote the music, and you’ll have to understand, Mike, he was not liked in Vienna at all. Do you know what I’m saying? He had been there for years and nobody came to his concerts. He was getting work basically as a piano teacher, selling little pieces here and there to a duke, he was just really not succeeding because nobody liked his music. No one understood it except Leonore, this bohemian lady who just coaxed all the royalty, saying, “If I love him, you should love him.” Anyway, it went on and became a hit for one year and the money was pouring in, it was a big hit on Vienna’s stage, and then the reviewer who actually gave it the best review for an anniversary went back to see it and actually wrote that this music was shit and it closed the next night. But Louie had enough money to take an ad out in The Vienna Times saying basically the he knew that the music was shit but that his s**t was better than anybody else’s s**t.

MR: [laughs] Do you think that the way he lived and the type of person he was and maybe not getting accepted by the masses might have influenced or contributed to his being able to make such great works?

PFS: That’s been the study of my life. I’ve spent eighteen years with him now, his letters, his diaries, his journals, all of the lies that had been written about him, all of the myths that had been written about him. There’s one book that came out serendipitously a year before I finished the project, it was written by a fifteen-year-old boy and it was called Canto. It was a book written by a fifteen-year-old boy who lived next door to Beethoven and he was with him every single day for a year and a half. He wrote in his diary everything that Louie said, everything that he ate, all the clothes that he wore, all the work that he was working on. He said that Louie was basically childlike; when he was with children, he became a child. People didn’t understand that kind of imp-like thing. Mozart had it too, in a way. I learned so much from this kid that I then had to call the song “My Beethoven Canto” because so much of the truth of his being comes out in that book.

MR: How did you approach the lyrics? This is certainly the oldest music you’ve ever put lyrics to, right?

PFS: That’s a great question, I haven’t ever looked at it. Let me look at it. The way that I looked at “Eve Of Destruction” when I was writing it was that this is impossible to write. It’s impossible to say what I’m really thinking and feeling in a commercial way that cannot be argued away. And I found that place, I don’t know if by grace or by design but I knew that I needed to find a place that is inescapably real and is the real story of his life, and I needed to find that place where pop music meets classical music but not in that old, stale format the turns off everybody. It needed a new format so I needed to write a new kind of music inspired from the heart by him. That took fifteen years to learn, so I wouldn’t recommend trying this at home.

MR: [laughs] We’ve been talking about Beethoven’s body of work, but what about your body of work? Your songs were recorded by The Turtles, The 5th Dimension… You had another huge hit with “Secret Agent Man.”

PFS: Exactly, I know. It really is a leap. You know what the leap is? I’m not trying to tell you I know what “is” is, but the leap is similar from “Tell Them I’m Surfing” to “Eve Of Destruction,” from “Eve Of Destruction” to My Beethoven. They’re just unaccountable steps.

MR: With “Secret Agent Man,” what is the origin of that song? How did it come to be recorded by Johnny Rivers?

PFS: It was a hit television show in England called Danger Man. There was a worldwide contest, as I think I remember, all the writers were asked to write a theme song because CBS was going to put it on American TV. I wrote the opening riff and wrote a first verse and a chrous, submitted it and they wrote back saying they sort of like it but they’ve changed the name of the show to Secret Agent, can I rewrite the song? Man, Mike, when they changed the name, everything fell into place. The whole lyric changed overnight and the chorus came into being. Johnny Rivers was asked to record the opening of it–the first twenty seconds of the TV show, just one verse and one chorus, but The Ventures were on his label, Dolton records. When I demoed the song with the one verse and the chorus, I decided to just do an instrumental with three verses and three choruses, so I demoed and instrumental of it. The Ventures heard the demo and then went in and recorded it. “Secret Agent Man” came out first recorded by The Ventures and then Hal Blaine who recorded the demo liked it so much that they put out his demo “Secret Agent Man” by Hal Blaine the drummer. The Ventures’ record was going up the charts, Hal Blaine’s record was about to hit the charts and Johnny Rivers didn’t like the song that much but he was convinced to go in and record it at that point. When he did, he shot all the others down.

MR: That’s one of the classics of the era, yet another contribution that you’ve made. You know, in the couple of major swings you took, you hit home runs.

PFS: I don’t understand it. I’m grateful, but damn it, music has meant everything to me in my life. There hasn’t been a wife, there’s hasn’t been children, it’s just basically been the love of music from hearing the Platters and Elvis Presley and Little Richard and Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis, that was just it. I guess I really loved all that so very much that maybe what talent I had has grown over the years, which is really strange that that happens. It’s rare.

MR: What’s interesting is that someone else, another great writer, would actually write a song about you and it would become popular, that would be Jimmy Webb’s “P. F. Sloan.”

PFS: Yes, that’s pretty darn strange as well, but wonderful, absolutely wonderful. The song is wonderful, don’t you agree. It’s just a haunting song. I never get tired of it. Nobody gets tired of it.

MR: Do you think Jimmy Webb caught on to something about you that maybe even you didn’t recognize? Has that ever been said to you?

PFS: Yeah, Mike, it’s just been pointed out to me by Rumor that she had toured with Jimmy last summer and was asking him about me. She ascertained from Jimmy’s answers that Jimmy felt that I was the realest person that he knew and that everything else was phony.

MR: There you go, there’s that theme again. And Rumor! You’re pals now, right?

PFS: Yes, I hope so. I love talented people. She is an extraordinarily sensitive and talented person. Very down to earth, young and smart, not about to sell her soul to the company, it’s such a thrill being around someone with their future ahead of them and knowing the pitfalls along the way and hoping that maybe in some way I can serve her and help her avoid a couple of those pitfalls.

MR: What advice do you have for new artists?

PFS: Well there are two aspects to that, there’s business and personal. In terms of personal, believe in yourself at all costs and know that you’re growing to grow beyond your comprehension. Don’t sell yourself too cheaply at first. Business-wise, again don’t go with anyone who tells you that you’re going to be part of a family and that you’ll be taken care of. Be persistent. There’s one thing that will knock down every gate. Be persistent and know that if you truly love what you’re doing others will love it too and you will grow in ways you never imagined. That’s really what the trip is all about.

MR: Wow, that’s beautiful. This is probably more for my curiosity than anything, but what was the story with Eugene Landy?

PFS: I don’t know how I can explain to you except that at the time that I disappeared, everybody was beginning to then take credit for the things that I had done. Jimmy Webb had already given interviews saying that there was no P.F. Sloan, that it’s just a name that he created. The cockroaches were in the kitchen and the light has been out for so long that the cockroaches forget that the kitchen doesn’t belong to them. They get so bold that when the light goes on they look at who’s standing there and they go, “Who the heck are you and what are you doing here?” instead of running for cover. I think that’s what happened to Eugene Landy. He just really, truly didn’t expect that the light would go on. He wanted credibility and it’s curious–it’s God’s grace really–that he chose my name to give credibility to why he was writing with Brian Wilson.

MR: Why would he even need that kind of credibility? It just doesn’t make sense.

PFS: Yeah, but the medical community was starting to get down on him because he was saying, “Listen, this man that you’re working with is a talented songwriter, what credit do you have? Why should you be taking advantage of your client?” and he says, “Well, I hate to tell you this, but I am a songwriter, my secret pseudonym is P.F. Sloan.” And they go, “You’re P.F. Sloan?” and he goes, “Yeah, that’s right.” He figured nobody would know what I look like or anything like that. Yeah, it’s a crazy story, isn’t it? But it really worked out well for Brian, though, didn’t it?

MR: Phil, how did you react to all that?

PFS: To the Eugene Landy? I initially was scared, simply because there’s a big backstory and I don’t want to go into it except that Dunhill Records told me that they owned my name and that I couldn’t use it anymore, otherwise I’d be sued. Dunhill Records and the publishing company claimed that they could make anyone that they wanted “P.F. Sloan.” You know what I’m saying? I didn’t know whether Eugene Landy had bought the rights to the name, but when Billboard called me up and asked me could I prove I was P.F. Sloan I said, “How do I do that? I just am.” They said, “Phil, if you’re well enough, just write a letter to Billboard stating that you’re P.F. Sloan and you’re the one who wrote this song and Eugene Landy is a liar,” and that seemed to work.

MR: Wow. Phil, what about your memoirs? They just came out?

PFS: Yeah.

MR: Congratulations. Beyond that story, is there a high point or two in the book that we can talk about for people who don’t know your history?

PFS: [laughs] Honestly, Mike, the book is more like a pilgrim’s view of going through the 1960s. It’s impossibly unreal. On the left is The Beatles, on your right is The Rolling Stones, here’s Buffalo Springfield, here are The Byrds. It was absolutely surreal that I was at the center of the universe of all that and I’m earning ten dollars a week.

MR: Hopefully, you’ll make more off this book. Would “Eve Of Destruction” be a good way to summarize that decade?

PFS: Well, Mike, you helped me answer the question! [laughs] I don’t know. Are we on the eve of destruction? Have we passed it? Are we on the other side of it? It doesn’t seem so, to me. Does it seem so to you?

MR: Right, no. But then the same issues keep coming up. Why do you think that is?

PFS: Let me see if I can help you and help myself, too. The sixties had a thing called “compressed time,” right? The Beatles would come out with five singles a year and two albums. In the last fifteen years, has there ever been an artist that has come out with five major singles and two major albums per year? It’s like every four or five years, isn’t it? Everything in the sixties was compressed, but we thought it was normal time, so we thought that all these problems would be solved by now.

MR: Interesting. I never heard that perspective yet, but it does seem like that. So now we have to dig in deep to all these issues that we merely touched in the sixties?

PFS: Yeah, goodness is working hard, but the retrograde forces–there’s so many issues that we’re dealing with today. Fifty percent of the population believes that the end of the world is near. When I was writing, talking about the end of the world as, “It would be the end of the world if we didn’t fix these problems,” now fifty percent of the country believes that we’re in the end times and they don’t believe in fixing anything. They just want to get everything that they can until Jesus comes back with an uzi.

MR: [laughs] That’s excellent. That’s the line for the day. Got a solution to all this?

PFS: The solution is persistence, kindness, and seeing yourself in everyone else. All that’s good in life is the goodness of life. Money is important but obviously everyone knows it’s not the most important, but it’s become the most important thing. There’s a whole new generation today of kids who are twenty-two and under that were polled by Duke University on what they wanted to be in life. Their answer was two things: rich and famous. That’s it. In my humble estimation, the corporate world has taken over music.

MR: Phil, after My Beethoven, what will you be working on next?

PFS: I don’t know. The thing that I know, the thing that I’ve experienced is that P.F. Sloan and music have a life of their own. That’s what I’ve experienced. I pretty much gave up music for twenty-five years and then all of a sudden P.F. Sloan reentered my life and said, “It’s time to make an album.” And that’s what I did. With My Beethoven, all I could do was dream. Really dream. Come on, Mike, I can tell you how many people I know that have gotten caught getting Pro Tools and having a hundred tracks and then ten years later, you call them up and say, “How’s your work going?” and they say, “I’m perfecting the flute parts.” Ten years and you’re working on flute? I would laugh at that. I would say “These people are completely insane.” Yeah, I’ll take a week, maybe take a month to write a song, I don’t know. A couple of weeks if you have the luxury of time. I have the luxury of time. How do I fill my days? Nobody’s asking me to perform, nobody’s paying me to record, so how do I fill my days? I’m going to fill my days with as much beauty as I possibly can. With as much sincerity and high-level thinking and poetry in my life, in my soul, as I possibly can and not expect that anyone will ever really hear it. Actually, until the record came out only four people had ever heard it in the course of fifteen years, as it evolved. It was truly just the most remarkable experience of my life, the way to watch it evolve. But the beauty of it was that it evolved far greater beauty than I could have even imagined. I don’t know what to say about it except that this what Ludwig Van Beethoven did every day of his life his whole life, creating the most beautiful things that nobody ever listened to. I was prepared for that.

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne