The day The Lovin’ Spoonful became the first pop act busted for drugs
In the summer of 1966, The Lovin’ Spoonful were a band on the rise. Very little appeared to be an obstacle that would get in their way at this point, and it would be in July of that same year that they managed to score their first number one hit single with ‘Summer in the City’. They’d been in the US top ten a total of four times prior to this, but this shift towards a heavier rock style than they had previously been known for was arguably what made the track so unique and such a smash with audiences.
However, things had almost gone catastrophically wrong for the band just two months prior to this landmark achievement, and a series of incidents rocked the group to the point that they could’ve disbanded before achieving the peak of their success. Thanks to the culture of the time and the strict law enforcement that came in response to it, their career could’ve been over just as rapidly as it had taken off.
The counterculture movement that had exploded in the US during the 1960s saw a rise in drug use, and the state of California, which was arguably at the epicentre of the phenomenon, took drastic measures to curb the amount of drug-related crime taking place. As harsh a penalty as it may seem now, the punishment for marijuana possession in the state rose to one to ten years in prison, while the charges for selling the substance were increased to five to 15 years. The Lovin’ Spoonful were from Greenwich Village in New York, however, and may not have been quite as aware of the stringent laws in place.
So, when the band descended upon the West Coast to continue their tour of college campuses with a performance in San Francisco at the University of California, Berkeley, they wouldn’t have been aware that the ounce of pot that they were sold at a party the night before their show would land them in hot water with the forces. The cops sniffed out the drugs that bassist Steve Boone and guitarist Zal Yanovsky were carrying on them and were arrested and detained pending further questioning.
Now, having only an ounce on them may not seem like much, but the police insisted that the duo cooperated with them in order to avoid the harshest penalties. With Yanovsky being a Canadian, he was facing the harshest punishment of the two, risking being deported back to his home country, and in order to swerve a complete catastrophe, they chose to grass up their supplier, Bill Loughborough. The Lovin’ Spoonful had the opportunity to gain lots of cool points with their fanbase for being the first pop group to get busted for drugs, but they’re also now known as the first of their kind to let the law win.
As one might imagine, this decision to cooperate with enforcers meant that their fans within the counterculture movement were up in arms about how they were willing to bend their backs to the law, and while they would go on to have their most successful song that summer, that would almost be the last flicker of their popularity. The majority of their fans were outraged that they would report their drug dealer in order to get off scot-free, and this diminished level of notoriety for being a great band and increased notoriety for being snitches caused tensions to rise within the band.
Yanovsky’s tenure with the band wouldn’t last much longer, and he was forced out of the group in 1967 after his decision to fess up. And by 1968, shortly after Loughborough had received his sentence of just three months in jail followed by three years probation, the band had decided to call it a day. The music fans of the 1960s were incensed by the fact that a band would incriminate a drug dealer and essentially go against everything the culture stood for, and unfortunately for them, the band were ultimately labelled as squares from that moment onwards.
