A Star among Us: Leland resident Steve Boone topped the chart in the 1960's
By Linda Thomas
His home office is filled with the kinds of things you’d expect to see in the office of a semi-retired man with a wide range of interests—computers, gadgets, books, research files, photography equipment, a couple of guitars, a keyboard, music paraphernalia, and photos of his family, sailboats and outdoor scenes. But there are two things you might not expect to see in Steve Boone’s home office—two shiny gold records hanging on the wall.
One of the gold records is the big album size, the other is that funny little "45" size. These are mementos of a music career that took off like a rocket in the late 1960s and is still rockin’ today. Yes, Steve Boone, the tall, slender guy with the receding hairline and the deep voice, the guy who enjoys quiet times at his home in Waterford and kayaking in the waters around the neighborhood, is actually a bona fide rock star!
He might not be a rock star by today’s standards, but in the 1960s Steve Boone played bass in a band that was one of the very first to come out of the folk era and evolve into the folk rock scene.
The band challenged the chart supremacy of the British invasion; racked up an astonishing seven Top-Ten singles in less than two years (1965-66); adopted "Good Time Music" as their motto; and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. It’s been said that future members of the Grateful Dead were inspired to leave the folk scene and "go electric" after hearing this group on their West Coast tour.
Know who it is yet? Here are few more clues: The original group included John Sebastian as lead singer, although all the members of the band were songwriters; their music was featured in the 1995 film Die Hard: With a Vengeance and in Woody Allen’s first feature film, What’s Up, Tiger Lily; in 1980 the original band members came together one more time to perform a cameo in Paul Simon’s film One-Trick Pony.
The final clue: Do You Believe in Magic?
OK, by now you’ve probably figured out that our neighbor Steve Boone is one of the original members of The Lovin’ Spoonful, the group that stormed onto the music scene from 1965 to 1969. Here’s what the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame had to say on their induction in 2000:
The good-time sounds of The Lovin’ Spoonful made the quartet a fixture during the golden age of Top Forty radio. Over a period of two years in the mid-Sixties, the New York–based group charted a string of ten Top Forty hits, seven of which placed inside the Top Ten at a time when the competition included Motown, the Beatles and countless British Invasion bands. The Lovin’ Spoonful’s tuneful, poppy singles have stood the test of time and at least one of them, "Do You Believe in Magic," remains a defining rock and roll anthem.
The four original members—singer/guitarist John Sebastian, guitarist Zal Yanovsky, bassist Steve Boone and drummer Joe Butler—came together in Greenwich Village. The folk-music scene was in full swing, but the electrified sounds of the Beatles and the other pop bands of the day had also caught their attention. Retaining their folkie roots while exploring new directions, The Lovin’ Spoonful adapted folk-style finger-picking to electric instruments. Their folk-rock hybrid was particularly evident in the unusual combination of autoharp and electric guitar on "Do You Believe in Magic." What really set The Lovin’ Spoonful apart from the mid-Sixties pack of one-hit wonders was their daring eclecticism. No two singles were written in the same style. Between 1965 and 1968, they tackled jug-band music ("Good Time Music"), ragtime ("Daydream"), country ("Nashville Cats"), folk-pop ("You Didn’t Have to Be So Nice"), hard rock ("Summer in the City") and orchestrated pop ("She Is Still a Mystery").
So, we were wondering, as you may be too, how did Steve Boone make it to the Hall of Fame and how did he end up choosing Brunswick County for his home?
Boone was born in North Carolina at Camp Lejeune, the second of four sons of Emmett and Mary Boone. His father was in the Marine Corps and after World War II he returned to his profession in the hotel business, building on his prior experience as an administrator for President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Warm Springs, Georgia, summer White House and health spa.
Steve Boone’s youth was spent in the Pocono Mountains and later in Florida, where he developed three interests that would play big roles later on in his life—sailing, music and the dream of being a Marine Corps aviator. Boone became a fan of Elvis and Buddy Holley and he admired his older brother, Skip, who played in a rock band in Florida.
While growing up in Florida, Boone remembers his Dad taking him to a movie set where Gary Cooper was filming. Six-year-old Boone learned an important lesson as he got to sit on Cooper’s lap and discover that so-called "celebrities" were just regular people after all.
When Boone was a teenager, the family moved back north to Long Island, New York, where he continued to dream of becoming a military pilot, even going so far as to run away to join the Navy at age 14. Those dreams were shattered when a car wreck left him with a paralyzed right foot at age 16. But that led to the development of the skill that would take him to the musical heights. While recuperating for nearly a year, Steve Boone learned to play folk guitar.
An opportunity to fill in with his brother’s band soon followed, and this is where Boone met future Lovin’ Spoonful drummer Joe Butler. After a post high school summer of motorcycling around Europe, Boone and Butler met John Sebastian and Zal Yanovsky in Greenwich Village in late 1964. Boone started college to study automotive engineering, but by the next summer he was on the road with the group known as The Lovin’ Spoonful. He agreed to give it six months to make it in the music business or he’d return to school. The rest is music history.
Over the next couple of years, the group hit it big, with seven of their singles hitting the Top Ten Charts. The first was "Do You Believe in Magic", followed soon after by two songs that Boone co-wrote, "You Didn’t Have To Be So Nice" and the number one smash hit "Summer In The City." The band toured the United States and Europe, appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show
, American Bandstand and Hullabaloo, and performed at The Hollywood Bowl and in Central Park. The Lovin’ Spoonful was one of the first rock bands to perform at Fordham University—for a crowd demanding nine encores!"It was an exciting time to be in the music business," says Boone. "In the ’50s and early ’60s the record companies pretty much told the bands what to do. But with the arrival of The Beatles came a new creativity. Bands started writing and arranging their own music, gaining more control."
One of the band’s most memorable concerts was at the Marquis Club in London, with Beatles John Lennon and George Harrison in the audience. "Our amps blew out right in the middle of the concert… now that was embarrassing," says Boone.
As often happens, the band split up as the stresses of being on the road more than 250 days a year took a toll on everyone. Sebastian went on to a solo career. Boone did a little music producing, and then opted for a complete change of pace: He bought a 56-foot sailboat and spent the next four years cruising the Caribbean and writing songs.
Refreshed, Boone returned to the music business in 1973, moving to Baltimore and starting Blue Seas Studio. After a couple of years in this industrial area, a unique opportunity presented itself. Blue Seas moved onto a 135-foot Danish-modern barge converted to a recording studio just at the beginning of the renaissance of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Working with the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris, Robert Palmer, Ricky Skaggs and Little Feat, Blue Seas soon had a reputation as a state-of-the-art studio with a very laidback atmosphere, away from the frenzy of the New York and L.A. music scenes.
But it all came to an end on Christmas Day in 1977, with an emergency call to Boone to tell him that Blue Seas Studio had sunk at the dock. His manager and a friend had managed to save his Martin D28 guitar and some of the hardware, but Blue Seas’ priceless library of master tapes was destroyed. The cause was never determined, and Blue Seas never recovered. But Boone had fallen in love with Baltimore and moved on to yet another phase in his life by buying and rehabilitating a 13-room former boardinghouse in the Fells Point section of Baltimore with the help of his brother, Mike.
In 1986 Boone moved again, back to the warmth of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he settled into a life of producing and writing songs. He also indulged one of his passions by becoming a river guide for the local Historical Society.
In 1991 Boone, Butler and Jerry Yester, who played piano on the original recording of "Do You Believe in Magic", re-formed The Lovin’ Spoonful, recruiting two new members. They are actively touring again but in small doses.
"We do a number of special music cruises and concert dates each year," says Boone. "In 2008 we’re working with old friends Paul Revere and the Raiders and Three Dog Night on a couple of cruises plus touring in Canada, and that’s just the first three months!"
Back to the question of how Boone and his wife, Lena, ended up in Leland. It all goes back to roots and friendship. Boone notes, "I always felt at home in the Wilmington area, having started out at Camp Lejeune. Plus my old friend and studio manager Guy Phillips lives here and has been bugging me for years to buy some property from him."
The Boones found a 12-acre property off Maco Road, with a house, outbuildings and a tractor, but they soon realized that the "hobby farm life" wasn’t right for them so that property is up for sale. They fell in love with the lifestyle at Waterford and are enjoying their neighbors and the ease of getting out into the natural areas. Lena is a competitive bodybuilder and likes to run on the local roads.
Steve Boone’s "short list" of things to do these days includes a leisurely car trip through Europe, recertifying his private pilot’s license (yes, he did get to fly), helping Lena succeed with her music, writing and painting, and getting involved in the community. And, of course, he continues earning a living with his own music, writing and photography.
What would surprise people about Steve Boone? "Probably that I’m not a great bass player," he says. "But I do have well-developed sense of rhythm, the ability to integrate well with other musicians, and I bring some style to the music. That’s as important as great musical talent in a band."
If you’ve been looking over the list of Lovin’ Spoonful hits and humming them as you read but your albums or tapes haven’t seen the light of day in years, there’s good news. You can visit their website www.lovinspoonful.com and listen to MP3 clips and check out their schedule. You can also watch old clips (oh the styles and the hair!) on YouTube. Listening to the Spoonful is sure to bring back memories of a more innocent time. Their unique brand of good-time music, which combined traditional folk and blues influences with the rock and roll of the late ’60s, is music that’s especially nostalgic for legions of early Baby Boomers.
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