The artists that seem to matter the most are the trendsetters who change the very direction of music -- artists who run the risk of ruining careers and alienating fan bases for the sake of creativity. These pioneers often spark large musical trends that eventually change the course of popular music, but always seem to be left behind themselves as the more appealing, visible acts rush to cash in on the success of the new genres.

Most authorities on music history (including Rolling Stone magazine) consider The Electric Prunes the first psychadelic rock and roll band. Though the band would have only limited commercial success, their contribution to music is a lasting one -- an entire generation of artists went on to take the seeds planted by the Prunes and grow these ideas into the musical genre that defines the late 1960's.


XMFan: When did you get your first bass?

Mark: I believe I got my first bass in high school. We had actually formed a band in junior high school -- Ken Williams, who ended up playing guitar in the band (The Prunes), and I went to junior high school together -- and we played in a ninth grade talent show. I played guitar in that band. Then, we formed what turned out to be the Electric Prunes, and somebody had to play the bass. Well, that turned out to be me. The first bass I owned was, I believe, a Saint George. Not a big model... (Laughs) Right after that, I went out and got what I thought was a Hofner bass, because that was what McCartney was playing. I thought it was a Hofner, but it turned out to be a knock-off of a Hofner.

XMFan: Tell us a bit more about how your first band evolved into The Electric Prunes.

Mark: My very first band was back in seventh grade, when we were given an assignment where we had to do something about the American west. Five of us approached the teacher and asked if we could play American folk songs instead of writing the project. She said it was a really cool idea. I think the band consisted of a drummer, saxaphonist, guitar player, piano player, and maybe a trumpet player. It turned out that we didn't learn any western or civil war songs -- I think what we ended up playing was the Peter Gunn theme, a song called Alley Cat, which was a big hit, and Stranger On The Shore. We all had a good time, and one of the guys' fathers happened to be a professional musician who played alot for Steve Allen. We were able to use his music stands and put our names on them.

From there, three or four of us -- all guitar players -- played for that ninth grade talent show, and that basically evolved into the Prunes when I met James Lowe. We got a drummer, started playing around, and went from there. Back then, there was only one way to get a record to anyone, and that was to release it through a major label. There wasn't the internet, and word of mouth didn't do you any good. If it didn't end up on the radio or in stores -- particularly 45s, because everything was singles based -- you never went anywhere. We were going around and cut some demos; I believe the first demo we ever cut was direct to acetate. We went in and played, and they just burned the disc right away. You didn't have to wait any time for it, but the quality wasn't great.

We were playing under the name of Jim And The Lords. One day we were rehearsing in my parents' garage, and this woman came by. She and her husband were selling a house up the street, and she stood outside our house listening. My father asked if she'd like to come in, so she came in and asked us if we'd like to play at a party. At that party was the man who turned out to be our producer, Dave Hassinger. He sent us away for about six months and said he wanted us to learn all the Beatles songs just like the Beatles played them; He wanted us to learn all the Rolling Stones songs the way the Stones played them; All of the Byrds songs like the Byrds played them. The reason he wanted us to do that was when we went into the studio, if he wanted us to sound like Penny Lane on the record, we'd know what that was. So we did that. We went away and learned all these songs, then went to Leon Russell's home recording studio where we cut three or four songs. One of those happened to be Too Much To Dream -- which was a ballad when we got it, by the way. We didn't write it, and it was given to us as a ballad.

Dave took it to Warner Brothers, who loved the record, but we didn't have a name yet. Dave called to tell us we had a deal with Warner Brothers, but they needed to know which name it's under. Jim And The Lords wasn't going to make it, because we weren't playing surf music. Well, you know, it's hard to name a band. Most of the time a name sounds stupid until you get a hit record. What if I came to you and said, "I'm going to call our band The Beach Boys." That's a pretty dumb name -- until they are The Beach Boys. I remember when The Beatles first came out. We thought it was a stupid name. Anyway, we came up with a list of about fifty names. About that time, there were a bunch of grape jokes going around -- which is kind of stupid now -- but one of the jokes was where Moby Grape got their name. A good friend of ours, (Moby Grape guitarist) Peter Lewis, told us their name came from, "What's purple and swims in the ocean?" We got ours from, "What's purple and goes buzz, buzz, buzz?" Well, that's an electric prune.

We put that at the end of our list of names, but James always loved the name. I didn't like the name. Dave Hassinger, our producer, was engineering the Rolling Stones at the time. During a session, he turned to Jagger and a couple of others and mentioned the name. As I understand it, Jagger said he liked the name and we went with it. Basically, we were called to a meeting and were told it was the name that was chosen.

XMFan: You mentioned you weren't a "surf music" type band, of course, but for that matter really weren't any other neat boxed category of music. So where did... Well, where did your sound come from?

Mark: The first thing to remember is when we were growing up, albums weren't a big deal. Most of the time an album would give you a hit song, along with nine others that sounded just like the hit song. My first influence was probably Duane Eddy, and it extended out to Dick Dale -- so I was influenced by surf music -- and back then there was also alot of rhythm and blues. James had his influences, and his first was Les Paul -- not because of his guitar, but because of his double-tracking and what he did with the tape recorder. James has always been more of a sound person, where I have always leaned towards what the song is about.

In the studio, James just sort of did what came naturally. I don't know quite how to describe what happened. Too Much To Dream was one of those records that fell into place; in other words, the prime examples are the openings. There's that "fuzz" opening where it sorta goes up, then dies out. What happened was we were recording on both sides of the tape to save money. Ken had this '59 Les Paul that had a Bigsby on it, so at the end of a song he hit this low note and wobbled away on the Bigsby. Well, when James walked into the studio, they flipped the tape over to record -- and the low note from the other side of the tape bled through. You actually heard it backwards. He said, "That's a really cool sound. We should use that." The opening basically came about by accident, and the good news was that was how we looked at recording, and still do. If something happens and you hear it, try it. Take the backwards guitar on Too Much To Dream... Back then, what you had to do was flip the tape and have the song come at you backward while you were trying to play forward. The thing was, if you've ever tried to play to a backwards track, there's no drum beat. You get the hit first and the suction up, so there's no time. So my job was to count where we were in the song -- where we were measure-wise. Well, five to six measure into the song I had no idea where we were. Not a clue. I just looked up and said, "You're on your own, man!," and some of the stuff that happened to be played just worked. We originally had a break in the song when we first cut it, and decided to do something there -- but had no idea what that would be. We decided to do the static and "No break!" thing. And alot of stuff happens that way. I think when you do everything electronically, like they do nowadays, you miss all those accidents. A big part of what we did was to allow those accidents to occur, and not be so locked into our ideas that we couldn't hear things. That's a big part of how our sound evolved.

We always knew we loved tremelo, which is a big part of what we do. It gives sort of a bright movement. So it was really a combination of what everybody loved, as well as the fact we were coming into a musical time where you were allowed to try things. Keep in mind that prior to this, you were truly limited by the recording capabilities. Although most of our stuff was recorded on a four-track, that was still a step up. We were just at the forefront of everyone saying, "What if you...?" Fill in the blank. What if you did this? What if you took a motorcycle and drove it through the studio?

XMFan: Did you feel like you were taking a risk by giving the record company this kind of song?

Mark: Well, the record company originally hated Too Much To Dream. They called it "the wierd one." Ironically, it was all we knew how to do. Every time we tried to do something a little "straighter," it wound up coming out the same way no matter what we did. They took the song, and nobody at the label knew what to do with it at first. How do we market this song when there's no way of describing it? "Psychadelic" wasn't even a term, and it was just a strange song. It wasn't a great dance song -- it was just different, and luckily people caught that. The song broke in the pacific northwest and took off from there.

XMFan: Tell us more background on the Too Much To Dream album.

Mark: We always wanted to see how "far out" we could go, and our producer decided we should be as versitile as The Beatles. Unfortunately -- or fortunately -- we weren't The Beatles, because they were already there. At the time I was only seventeen years old, and not exactly at the height of my maturity level. We could be pushed around. We cut some really strange songs that the label believed were too weird to be included on our first album, and were made to record a cover of an Al Jolson song, About A Quarter To Nine. We did a bunch of stuff on that album that I've never liked, and I still can't listen to. It was meant to be versatile and clever, but I believe the songs on the album confused people. They heard Too Much To Dream and Get Me To The World On Time, then a song like Quarter To Nine... Rather than saying how strange we were, or eventually psychadelic, I believe they were saying, "Who the hell are these people?" I'm not sure how many people were confused by this, but it sure confused us. (Laughs)

Stay tuned for part two of Mark Tulin's incredible interview!

The Electric Prunes can be heard on XM channels 60's on 6 and Deep Tracks.

The official Electric Prunes website can be found at http://www.electricprunes.net