- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- The bandmembers in the Strangeloves – Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein, and Richard Gottehrer – have been a cauldron of one-hit-wonders for years.
The Strangeloves – I Want Candy (1965): The bandmembers in the Strangeloves – the American songwriter/producer trio of Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein, and Richard Gottehrer – have been a veritable cauldron of one-hit-wonders over the years. They first teamed up in 1963 for the girl-group classic “My Boyfriend’s Back” by the Angels. The following year, in the wake of the British Invasion, they decided that they could not fake being British; so they reinvented themselves as a band called the Strangeloves and pretended that they were three brothers who grew up on a sheep farm in Australia. The liner notes on the album I Want Candy are probably entirely fabricated; even their supposed “first big hit”, “Love, Love, Love” is actually a U.S. single called “Love, Love (That’s All I Want from You)” that only made it to #122 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Once they came up with the #11 hit song “I Want Candy” in mid-1965, the Strangeloves were put in the uncomfortable position of having to perform as live artists, so they brought a touring band with them. The sole album by the Strangeloves, I Want Candy includes two other excellent songs that made the Top 40, “Cara-Lin” and “Night Time”; they have both been widely covered by such artists as David Bowie, Bauhaus, the J. Geils Band, the Fleshtones, Aaron Carter, and George Thorogood. Another song on I Want Candy, “Hang on Sloopy” was to have been their next single, and they had begun playing the song in concert by early 1965. At the time, they were touring with the Dave Clark Five, who told them that they planned to release a version of “Hang on Sloopy” when they returned to England. The Strangeloves decided to beat them to the punch, and while on tour in Ohio, the Strangeloves discovered a local band called Rick and the Raiders that was led by Rick Zehringer. They brought Rick back to New York and had him sing lead vocals over the backing-band track that they had already recorded. This created yet another hit with “Hang on Sloopy” that was released under the name the McCoys. That melody was later “sampled” in the cool novelty song “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron” by the Royal Guardsmen; the tune was well known enough so that everyone understood the implied lyric “hang on Snoopy” without its having to be uttered. I later saw Richard Gottehrer’s name on recordings by Blondie; and he produced the first two albums by the Go-Go’s, Beauty and the Beat and Vacation. With Seymour Stein, Richard Gottehrer was also the co-founder of Sire Records. Rick Zehringer later changed his name to Rick Derringer, and he recorded and toured extensively with Johnny Winter and his brother, Edgar Winter. Rick Derringer had his own one-hit-wonder experience in 1973 with his song “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo” (Johnny Winter had previously recorded “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo” a few years earlier). At a later date, Malcolm McLaren – the musical entrepreneur best known for managing Sex Pistols – assembled the musicians in the band Adam and the Ants (after Adam Ant became a solo artist and also escaped with the band name) with a teenaged Anglo-Burmese singer dubbed Annabella Lwin. (She was discovered by McLaren while singing in the dry cleaners where she worked part-time). As Bow Wow Wow, they recorded the Strangeloves song “I Want Candy”; coupled with an early MTV video, this song became a worldwide hit in 1982. I suppose most people would view “I Want Candy” by Bow Wow Wow as just another in this string of one-hit-wonders; but actually, I am a big fan of Bow Wow Wow, and I have most of their albums and songs.