Skip to main contentLarry Tamblyn wants to clear up a few misconceptions about his band, legendary '60s garage-rockers the Standells. But that is not an easy thing to do, especially considering that one of the bigger fallacies concerning the group is written into the lyrics of its signature song.
"Boston, you're my home," sings vocalist Dick Dodd on "Dirty Water," the band's grimy AM-radio classic that landed just outside the Top 10 in mid-1966. Naturally, the city—its sports teams in particular—adopted the tune as an unofficial anthem, most notably during the Red Sox's 2004 World Series run. Only problem: Boston was never the Standells' home—don't tell Celtics fans, but the band's from L.A.
But it's not being mistaken for a New Englander that still seems to annoy the 66-year-old Tamblyn. It's the widely held notion that he and his bandmates weren't always the scowling badasses they appeared to be after "Dirty Water" hit. In fact, to hear him tell it, when it came to threatening the country's values, the Standells were way ahead of the curve.
"We were the first American band to have long hair," he says.
It's that unacknowledged legacy as trailblazers that, in part, drives Tamblyn to continue playing with the Standells almost 50 years after co-founding the group in 1962. The original foursome, with Tamblyn on organ, indeed toured clubs up and down California before most of its Nuggets-era peers. Outside of a handful of amped-up B-sides, however, its early recorded output hardly hints at the aggressiveness that was to come. Tamblyn blames unadventurous producers—Sonny Bono being one—for dulling the band's sharp-edged sound (Tamblyn also says they had to cut their locks to get gigs).
Things changed when the band hooked up with producer Ed Cobb. A former pop musician, Cobb is credited with penning "Dirty Water" (he wasn't from Boston, either), although Tamblyn insists the version he presented to them was much different; he says it wasn't until they tinkered with it that it became the trashy, proto-proto-punk strutter that now blares from the speakers at Fenway Park every summer. Years later, the liner notes for Rhino's CD reissues of the Standells' albums painted Cobb as a svengali who molded four wholesome boys into sneering, snotty rebels. "He didn't change our sound," Tamblyn says, "he just allowed us to be creative."
Regardless, months after its release, "Dirty Water" started gradually climbing up the charts. The Standells capitalized, quickly churning out four albums in a similarly raw mold. Not long after finally reaching a national audience, however, a series of events conspired to begin dissolving the band. In 1967, a powerful, Dallas-based Christian fundamentalist led a campaign against its suggestive single "Try It," persuading radio stations across Texas to ban the song. In response, Cobb had the curious idea to have the group release a blue-eyed-soul ballad as a follow-up. It didn't work. And then, for the coup de grâce, Dodd quit the band. Though the group limped along for a couple years afterward (including a brief stint with future Little Feat singer Lowell George out front, who Tamblyn claims wanted to turn the group into a faux-greaser outfit à la Sha-Na-Na), "it was never what it was like in the beginning," Tamblyn says. He eventually put the Standells to rest in the early '70s, he thought for good.
"When I left the group, I never imagined it would have some sort of rebirth," he says.
But in the 1980s, as disco petered out and stripped-down rock 'n' roll slowly re-emerged, Tamblyn began hearing about young acts citing the Standells as an inspiration. Surprised by the band's lasting influence, Tamblyn decided to resurrect it for sporadic touring, and has kept it going with a revolving lineup ever since. It might not correct the alleged falsehoods attached to the band's career, but for Tamblyn, it has allowed him to see the small dent he helped make in the history of popular music.
"A day doesn't go by without either an older person or a younger person saying, 'I am who I am today because of you guys,'" he says.
The Standells play Saturday, Dec. 5, at East End. 9 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.
WWeek 2015