The bust that broke the band: Why did counterculture turn on The Lovin’ Spoonful?
The 1960s were a period of free love, spirituality, and psychedelia, which is all well and good to say on the surface. But it hardly takes a rocket scientist to figure out that certain illegal fumes fueled a large amount of this easy-going nature, and that drugs, specifically marijuana, were a huge component of the burgeoning countercultural scene. It was a fine line to walk: one that could be disguised and covertly pulled off by the likes of The Beatles, but unfortunately for others, including The Lovin’ Spoonful, it went up in flames.
For all intents and purposes, the folk-rock quartet had all the makings of a North American Beatles, with a string of no less than seven consecutive top ten singles in the US across the 18-month period between mid-1965 and the end of 1966. But unlike their Liverpudlian counterparts across the ocean, what The Lovin’ Spoonful lacked was the art of subtlety, which led them to a bust of epic proportions, one fated night in May 1966.
The band were touring US college campuses that spring, and the night before performing at the University of California, Berkeley, the band’s guitarist Zal Yanovsky and bassist Steve Boone indulged themselves with some drugs. However, the fun was soon cut short when they were busted by police for being in possession of one ounce of the green weed, spending the night in jail before being bailed out the next day.
Although it hardly seems like a Breaking Bad-level raid to us now, the fact remained that the substance was still highly illegal in California at the time, and this presented potentially seismic repercussions. For starters, Yanovsky was originally from Canada, so, concerned that he could be deported from the country if he was found guilty of the crime, he had to take some controversial action into his own hands.
Becoming the first band of the decade to be busted for drugs was somewhat of a shameful badge of honour for The Lovin’ Spoonful. Hence, in an attempt to mitigate their reputation and avoid Yanovsky being deported, he and Boone made the decision to co-operate with law enforcement and reveal the identity of their dealer, Bill Loughborough, to an undercover police officer at a party in the week following their arrest.
That seemed to work out well at the time, with the band able to carry on as though nothing had happened, and Loughborough subsequently being arrested in September 1966. Problem solved, right? Well, as it turns out, the ghost of their drug bust would later come back to haunt Yanovsky and Boone in ways they could have initially never imagined, and with cataclysmic effects far bigger than they would have suffered in the first place.
Naturally reeling from being dobbed in to the authorities, Loughborough set about on a smear campaign to destroy The Lovin’ Spoonful, but this actually only bore very limited results. Instead, it was a year down the line, in 1967, when the media caught wind of the fact that it was Yanovsky and Boone who had blown Loughborough’s cover, that news spread and the countercultural tides began to turn on their former all-American heroes.
The scene’s increasingly hostile reaction to the revelations put a strain on the dynamics of the band for obvious reasons, more so because, up until this point, fellow members John Sebastian and Joe Butler had been mostly oblivious to the real details of what went down that May night. The deceit, betrayal, and disloyalty ultimately became too much to bear, and Yanovsky was unceremoniously chucked from the band a year after the events first unfolded, in May 1967.
Over in Loughborough’s camp, he didn’t fare hugely well either, as he was sentenced to three months in jail, followed by three years of probation early the following year. But the most sour taste landed with The Lovin’ Spoonful in the end, as the level of ire directed towards them, combined with Yanovsky’s firing, resulted in diminished commercial success that they could never climb back from.
It seems quite the dramatic tale for what was a relatively small drug bust, granted, but it just shows how quickly things can spiral out of control when sensitive information finds itself in the wrong hands. The band may have learned that lesson quickly, but it was ultimately too late to salvage their career once the witch hunt had begun. In many ways, the counterculture of the 1960s was pretty much like Fight Club: the first rule about taking drugs is that you never talk about taking drugs.
