The ORIGINAL VERSION of Larry Stein has been put up for listening at www.myspace.com/markjohnsonsongs

This version was recorded in my parents house at 51 Montauk Avenue in Merrick New York in the late spring of 1969. I wrote the song after being very much influenced by Arthur Lee's classic album "Love Forever Changes" On that album was a song that featured an intense strumming acoustic guitar in the key of Em. I must have listened to that record all that year. Finally I had a vehicle for my subconscious, that strumming Em would serve to unlock all the pain and fear I had locked away from the 1966 suicide of my Friend Glenn Larko.

Glenn had shot himself during the summer of 1966 while I was away at boarding school in Maine. We had written dozens of songs together that year, actually I just gave his words music. Very Dylan sounding what with the harmonica and the monotone melodies I was attracted to at the time. I loved that Dylan album "Another Side of Bob Dylan." I use to fall asleep to it in my room. The sound of that single acoustic guitar and the way his voice was recorded really filled out the arrangement nicely. Glenn was a big Dylan fan so the two of us as early as 1965 were up there in my room on Montauk Avenue, after cutting school, recording these little ideas of his.
It took three years for me to finally deal with his untimely death. Now, up in that same room with a new stereo sound on sound recorder, I began to think in terms of writing songs that I knew would get some kind of treatment in the production. Back in 1966 Glenn Larko, as well as Larry Hoff and I were sort of all close friends. Larry went on strangely enough to work on the hit TV show, Law and Order as the sound recordist.

So here I am, loving this "Love" album and this guy Arthur Lee strumming away in Em. My friend Bruce DeSousa came by one day. Bruce and In had been in many Bands together throughout that period, 1965 through 1969. Here we were in front of my Sure mic plugged into this tape recorder that we could record a second track on. Here's what we did.
The first track consisted of me strumming an acoustic 12 string guitar while I sat at a base drum and thumped the pedal of the base drum and sang the first vocal track all at the same time. While I was doing that Bruce played his guitar on his lap with a slide. Bruce didn't sing because I had no more mics. All this went down on one side of the two track recorder. After we did that track I passed off the 12 string to Bruce (he's playing the climb down from Em to C bass part on his 12 string) and I went over to Billy Servideo's Farfisa organ that was up there in my room as well. We rewound the tape and while playing the first track through a speaker on my floor in the room (no headphones), we overdubbed the second track and I sang a second vocal overdub as well. It feels like we are on a stormy sea Two guys, two passes and we had a base drum going, two 12 string acoustics, an electric slide part and an organ pad running throughout the arrangement, not to mention a double tracked vocal. This was a break through moment for me. When I listened back to it it sounded unreal, better than or at least as good as anything out there. I had achieved full sonic recording using a non professional recorder and made it sound full with two tracks.  -Mark Johnson

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