James Lowe, who fronted the psych-garage-pop group the Electrical Prunes inside the late Nineteen Sixties, best acknowledged for his or her excessive 10 hit “I Had Too Quite a bit to Dream (Last Night),” died Would possibly 22 at age 82 his family reported.
Following the breakup of the Electrical Prunes, Lowe grew to change into an engineer and producer working with such artists as Sparks and Todd Rundgren, sooner than leaving music behind inside the early ’70s and finally discovering a second occupation on the planet of business filmmaking. After a quarter-century of not doing music, he reunited the Prunes inside the late ’90s and continued to hold out by the use of the tip of his life.
The family didn’t give a motive for demise, saying that Lowe “handed away on Would possibly 22, 2025, from pure causes — out of the blue, however peacefully — surrounded by family and music.”
The musician had luckily acceded to a wave of nostalgia for his band that solely appeared to accentuate currently, from performing to an adoring crowd in Los Angeles at a “Nuggets” tribute current in 2023 (“I Had Too Quite a bit to Dream Last Night” was the kickoff monitor to that conventional garage-rock compilation) to simply currently giving retrospective interviews for a group of rock podcasts.
“James left this world peacefully — his coronary coronary heart giving one remaining electrical beat, surrounded by the loving embrace of his family and enveloped by the sounds of his favorite music,” his children Lisa, Cameron, and Skylar said in an announcement. “He was a creative drive, a rock star with out pretense, and any individual who lived and cherished completely. Nonetheless an vital ingredient to James’ life was his 62-year marriage to Pamela, his guiding star and enduring muse for all points. … James was a visionary, a dreamer, a doer who not at all stopped creating, exploring, lifting others up — or believing in what’s attainable.”
One amongst Lowe’s largest followers was David Katznelson, an A&R authorities for Warner Bros. Data inside the ’90s who was chargeable for putting out a compilation that revived curiosity inside the Electrical Prunes and helped spur the reunion that few — least of all Lowe himself — thought would ever happen.
“As rapidly as I heard the Electrical Prunes, I knew it appeared like nothing I’d ever heard of,” says Katznelson. “, they’d been using backwards guitars, and major the way in which through which in using fuzz guitar and the wah-wah pedal” — to the aim that the producers of the Fox wah-wah pedal actually used the Prunes to push their product in selling inside the late ’60s. “And Jim was a pure engineer, which is why he went on to do totally different good knowledge — as soon as we focus on experimenting inside the ’60s, he was a sort of fellows who was truly doing it, which is why ‘I Had Too Quite a bit to Dream Last Night’ had such an iconic sound…
“For those who occur to similar to the psychedelic movement,” continued, Katznelson, “the Electrical Prunes, with their determine and their sound, truly define the psychedelic movement in methods through which solely just a few totally different bands truly did, exemplifying that for the the two principal knowledge that they did.” (After Lowe quit in 1968, the band briefly continued with out him; then their supervisor normal an all-new lineup with not one of the distinctive members that proved short-lived.)
The oldest of 9 children, Lowe grew up in southern California, making occasional searching journeys to Hawaii and coming of age musically beneath the sway of surf guitarist Dick Dale, whom he normally would see perform at Newport Seashore’s Rendezvous Ballroom. In 1965, he and plenty of different Taft Extreme school college students normal the Sanctions and had been discovered by report producer and engineer David Hassinger, whose claims to fame included engineering the Rolling Stone’s mid-’60s knowledge. Hassinger grew to change into their supervisor and helped get them signed to Warner Bros. Data’ Reprise imprint. Upon getting signed, Lowe and his bandmates Ken Williams, James “Weasel” Spagnola, Mark Tulin and Preston Ritter had been known as Jim and the Lords, a tag they’d been wanting to shed sooner than releasing their first single.
The origin of their remaining determine involved a joke similar to the one which prompted one different group of the time, Moby Grape. “Anybody said, ‘What’s purple and goes buzz buzz?’ And the reply was {an electrical} prune,” Lowe recalled. “Our bass participant suggested us that foolish joke and I said, ‘That’s gotta be the determine.’ In truth all of them didn’t reply to it, nevertheless Dave Hassinger took that determine to Warner Bros. He hated it too, nevertheless he received right here once more to me and said, ‘Guess what? Warner Bros. cherished the determine…. I do comprehend it’s a goofy one, nevertheless you remembered it.”
A main single, “Ain’t It Laborious,” didn’t stir quite a bit movement, nevertheless “I Had Too Quite a bit to Dream” rose to No. 11 on the Scorching 100, no matter doubts that it was applicable for AM airplay. A third single, “Get Me to the World on Time,” peaked at No. 27 sooner than the Prunes’ transient run as radio favorites received right here to an end. Their self-titled debut solely made it as far as No. 113 on the Billboard chart, little belying merely how enduring their largest hit would keep on the planet of well-remembered oldies over time.
The monitor was not written by the group nevertheless barely the female writing group of Annette Tucker and Nancie Mantz. “Annette gave us a demo of it, and it was like kind of like a country-Western ballad or one factor,” Lowe said. “Dave was precise adamant about altering points. He said, ‘You gotta put your particular person affiliation to it. Do one factor weird, have some breaks, do some stuff,’ irrespective of’” — an encouragement that Lowe put proper all the way down to Hassinger having been involved with the Rolling Stones and unusual hits like “Paint It Black.” “We took it and took it as far as we’d, taking part in round with it, and it totally modified all of the items, for us and for the monitor… We checked out it as a constructing. We did it in objects. We didn’t all get inside the studio and gather spherical and play ‘Too Quite a bit to Dream.’ We actually mapped it out, how we had been gonna do it, with breaks proper right here and breaks there… We not at all truly acquired to hearken to the monitor the way in which through which we did it in full until we accomplished it.”
As for the memorable opening to the smash. Lowe said, “From the beginning, no individual knew what that sound was initially. Ken Williams had been having fun with spherical alongside along with his guitar and we recorded going forward on a four-track after which we’d flip the tape over and report going the other technique to easily to economize, on account of we didn’t have money to buy rolls of tape. And one among many engineers at Leon Russell’s dwelling didn’t push the report button, and so we acquired left with the tail end of 1 factor backward… As quickly as I heard that sound, which received right here inside the studio by probability… it overwhelmed us. And I went inside the administration room and I said, ‘Regardless of that was, decrease that off. We’re gonna use it for one factor!’ … And as soon as we received right here to do ‘Too Quite a bit to Dream,’ I said, ‘Now we’ve acquired a spot to utilize that sound.’”
The second and remaining album with the distinctive lineup, “Underground,” received right here out in 1967. It was included on an NME guidelines of the “100 largest albums you’ve not at all heard.” The leadoff monitor, cowritten by Lowe, was “The Good Banana Hoax.” “For those who occur to keep in mind once more in 1967, I consider it was, there was a rumor going spherical that when you occur to fried banana peels and scraped that stuff off the inside of the banana peel, that you simply probably can get extreme from it,” he said. “I believed it was a unbelievable thought for a world joke, or a minimal of for an American joke.”
On the second album, they’d additional of their very personal distinctive supplies, nevertheless not on account of it was impressed by their manager-producer, Lowesaid. “Dave go a deal with Warner Brothers to provide the Grateful Lifeless’s album, so he went to San Francisco, which that made it good for us to report the problems we wished. He not at all appreciated any of our songs, so we couldn’t put any of our supplies on there. So we’d misinform him and use my partner’s maiden determine and my dad and mother’ maiden names and stuff to have the flexibility to place our songs on the report. So when he left metropolis, that was good for us.”
Lowe quit the group in 1968, with Hassinger making an attempt to take care of the group alive with ideas that included odd diversions into religious rock and lineups that decreasingly resembled the distinctive. Within the meantime, Lowe, a lot much less enthusiastic about performing, took to engineering — along with a reputation to work with Todd Rundgren’s distinctive group, the Nazz, on their second album (which extended to a third).
“That they had been looking out for a spot to report and any individual to report with. I assume Todd said their engineer had fallen asleep of their recordings they did once more in Philly. So he merely requested if I’d maintain awake — and I said, ‘Correctly, if the music’s good, I’ll maintain awake.’ In order that was the first requirements and we started recording collectively.”
Rundgren’s necessities are notoriously bigger than that, and so he clearly had faith in Lowe when he had him engineer actually one among his early manufacturing efforts, the debut album by Sparks, acknowledged on the time as Halfnelson. When it received right here time to do Sparks’ second album (now beneath their remaining determine), “A Woofer in Tweeter’s Garments,” Rundgren was already booked nevertheless requested Lowe to take over for them as producer. The best way through which Lowe remembered it, he was so enamored of what he was doing with Sparks that he decided to surrender the enterprise if the album didn’t take off. It didn’t, and so he did.
Lowe pivoted into directing children’s reveals and TV commercials. Throughout the time that he and his partner Pamela had been welcomed a third child, he began developing what his family described as his mountaintop dream dwelling inside the hills of Santa Ynez. Moreover they constructed a second dwelling in Cabarete, a bay inside the Dominican Republic.
Throughout the ’90s, Katznelson was making an attempt to place collectively an Electrical Prunes compilation for Warner Bros,, the place he was in A&R. In the long run the label handed, contemplating there wasn’t ample curiosity — nevertheless gave him the inexperienced delicate to license the material to himself at a small unbiased label he ran, Birdman Data. Collectively, they received right here up with some unreleased tracks and new mixes, amongst totally different treats for followers of the distinctive stuff. It ended up sparking a Prunes revival.
“We went into the studio to to be all ears to all that stuff,” says Katznelson, “and we ended up together with the jamming endings to plenty of the songs that had been kind of edited sooner than they’d been positioned on the first knowledge… Then Jim put the band once more together with nearly almost all of the distinctive avid gamers, and they also carried out quite a few dates. It was actually pretty unbelievable. We moreover did the first precise launch of the ‘Dwell in Stockholm’ report that had been recorded when the band was first touring the world after they’d been having preliminary success with ‘Too Quite a bit to Dream Last Night.’ And the Prunes started making new knowledge — and I’d saved in touch with Jim ever since.
“When that new report received right here out in 2000, they did a pair reside reveals spherical that, and that’s after they started packing them in. They may do these excursions with bands similar to the Seeds and even toured with some semblance of Love. That lasted for most certainly over a decade. That’s when he realized that folk nonetheless cherished him. Nonetheless you already know, even when did a reissue of the ‘Dwell in Stockholm’ album, years after we’d carried out the first one, even then he was like, ‘Why would you do that? Who’s gonna want that?’
“Jim was residing in Santa Ynez on the time, and he was shut with Peter from the Moby Grape, and the two of them received right here to a Halloween get collectively that I had in Beverly Hills and ended up doing a single that was in regards to the get collectively that that received right here out.” He moreover proudly welcomed his son Cameron, who adopted inside the path of music, on stage for lots of look. Additional simply currently, “Jim had not been having fun with for a while, nevertheless they did this current that Lenny Kaye put collectively for Wild Honey as a tribute to ‘Nuggets’ in Los Angeles and Jim stole the current, supposedly, approaching the stage with all individuals to do ‘Too Quite a bit to Dream.’”
This marked a turnaround from the Seventies, when the Kaye-curated “Nuggets” compilation received right here out in 1972, and led off with “Too Quite a bit to Dream,” serving as a result of the very exemplar of the garage-psych ethos that Kaye was attempting for example with the impactful two-LP set. As major as a result of it grew to change into for rock hounds, Lowe was up to now out of the music scene on the time that he didn’t even know the monitor led the compilation till his son pointed it out seven years later.
The family’s assertion often known as their father “an elder statesman of rock ‘n’ roll — not solely a witness to music historic previous, nevertheless actually one among its architects. And however he remained humble, always making time for followers, answering questions, sharing tales, and galvanizing youthful artists to look at their uncommon, experimental muses.”
“The issue that I cherished about Jim,” says Katznelson, “is that for him, as far as paintings was concerned, one thing is always attainable. And the idea is to attempt to find out a technique of getting as far out as you probably can, whereas sustaining true artistry, you already know? And that’s kind of how he lived his life. And he was solely a pleasant man. He was truly a unbelievable encapsulation of what you’d take into account whilst you take into account a ’60s artist and thinker — comfy to go in opposition to the grain, comfy to push points, comfy to attempt points, comfy to be uncovered to new ideas, every in music and previous, and really reside life by itself path. The reality is, there’s an Electrical Prunes monitor often known as ‘I Obtained a Strategy Of My Private,’ and that mainly matches Jim to a tee.”
Lowe is survived by his partner, Pamela; his children Lisa, Cameron, and Skylar; and his grandchildren Hana, Blue, Isla and Goldie, who affectionately often known as him “Dude.”
