John Sebastian brings hits, new music to Blue Note Hawaii

If John Sebastian had retired from the music business when he left the Lovin’ Spoonful in 1968, he would still be one of the significant American songwriters of the ’60s. His song “Do You Believe in Magic,” to name just one, is closely intertwined with many memories of the era.

The Lovin’ Spoonful, with Sebastian as singer and frontman, Zal Yanovsky, Joe Butler and Steve Boone, had a series of hits on the Billboard Hot 100. Sebastian wrote five of the band’s seven Top 10 hits between 1965 and 1966 — all diverse — and co-wrote the others, taking the band to the heights of popularity.

“That’s what the band was trying to do,” Sebastian said.

Since leaving the Spoonful, Sebastian has had a prolific solo career that included a surprise appearance at Woodstock, five albums for Reprise Records and several for other labels, session work, writing songs for a Broadway show and developing a stage musical adaptation of “Charlotte’s Web.”

In 1976, he topped the Billboard Hot 100 with another original composition, “Welcome Back,” written as the theme for sitcom “Welcome Back, Kotter.”

“It definitely came out of the blue,” Sebastian said of the song’s pop chart success. “I was way ‘out of style’ and that record took everybody by surprise, but I must immodestly say that I knew that it had potential.”

Sebastian will bring all that remarkable history with him when he plays Blue Note Hawaii on Wednesday and Thursday.

SEBASTIAN IS a multi-instrumentalist who plays guitar (6-string and 12-string), pedal steel guitar, autoharp, harmonium, Irish harp, ocarina, organ and piano.

“I’m pretty much following my interests,” he said, calling from a car somewhere between Portland, Ore., and Spokane, Wash. last week. “The various musical styles are either something I’d like to do seriously or something I’d like to imitate, and it’s gone all different ways.”

Born in New York City, he grew up in Greenwich Village listening to the music of his father, a classical harmonica player, and also to the music of noted blues and folk music artists such as Lead Belly, Sonny Terry, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Woody Guthrie and Burl Ives.

He attended New York University for a year, then ended his formal education to immerse himself in the Greenwich Village folk and blues scene.

Sebastian already had some serious performance credits when he formed the Lovin’ Spoonful with Yanovsky and Boone in 1964. Butler replaced the group’s original drummer after their first public performance, and the band quickly found pop-chart success.

The quartet’s debut single was “Do You Believe in Magic,” released in the summer of 1965. It peaked at No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Their second single, “You Didn’t Have to Be So Nice,” reached No. 10.

After that came “Day Dream” and “Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?” which both made it all the way to No. 2.

Sebastian has the knack with both lyrics and melody, and over the years, multiple artists have recorded his work.

“Darlin’ Be Home Soon,” from Sebastian’s 1967 soundtrack album for the movie “You’re a Big Boy Now” (it also appeared on “Hums of the Lovin’ Spoonful” in 1967) has been recorded at least 20 times.

Sebastian played “Darlin’ Be Home Soon” live at Woodstock in 1969; the same year, Joe Cocker included a version Sebastian calls “epic” on the album “Joe Cocker!”

The instrumental “Lonely (Amy’s Theme)” from the soundtrack has also been recorded multiple times, including an exotica version by Martin Denny. “I just found out,” Sebastian said. “I have to find it!”

THE LOVIN’ Spoonful was huge in Hawaii, and “Younger Girl,” a song from the first album, received lots of radio play here, even though it was never released as a single.

“The Spoonful did one Hawaiian show,” Sebastian recalled. “That was with the Rascals, who were way bigger than us in Hawaii at that time.

“I get to see (Rascals co-founder) Felix Cavaliere now and then. He and I have a lot of jokes in common.”

Sebastian likes Hawaii, he said, but won’t be staying long this time.

“I’ve really had great episodes when I was able to hang loose,” he said. “But this particular run I’m going to be jumping back and forth, so I have to treat it like a trip to Cincinnati.”

Sebastian isn’t coasting on his hits with the Spoonful, on “Welcome Back” or on his popularity as a songwriter. He recently completed “some forensic-type work,” going through archival recordings of songs he’s written for animated children’s films. Sebastian put the best of them on an album, “Short Songs for Shorter People,” that will be available for sale at the Blue Note.

He’s also celebrating the recent reissue of “Tar Beach,” an album he recorded in 1993 with guests Levon Helm of The Band and Terry Adams and Al Anderson of the rock band NRBQ.

Next up in the production pipeline is an album of new, mostly instrumental, arrangements of Lovin’ Spoonful classics Sebastian has recorded with guitarist Arlen Roth, whom Sebastian describes as “the Telecaster master.”

“Working on the Lovin’ Spoonful album has been a lot of fun,” Sebastian said. “We had to stop work so we could ‘go work’ and make some money, so we could continue.”