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Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular MusicA B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y ZSLOAN, P. F.(b Philip Gary Schlein, NYC; d 15 November 2015, Los Angeles, aged 70) Singer-songwriter. The family moved to the West Coast mid-'50s and changed the name to Sloan; the 'F' in his name came from Flip, a childhood nickname; he later legally changed it to Faith. He began writing promising songs as a teenager; according to Joel Whitburn, he recorded for Aladdin in 1959. Lou Adler, then with Screen Gems, put him together with Steve Barri, and they wrote 'Kick That Little Foot, Sally Ann', a Hot 100 entry for Round Robin, followed by 'I Found a Girl' for Jan and Dean, 'Let Me Be' for the Turtles, 'A Must to Avoid' for Herman’s Hermits, a TV theme song, 'Secret Agent Man', a hit for Johnny Rivers, and others. Then the mask of pop innocence came off. The apocalyptic 'Eve Of Destruction' was influenced by Bob Dylan at a time when the Vietnam war was becoming controversial; recorded by Barry McGuire, it was a no. 1 in 1965. Barri, who was usually the lyricist, later said that Sloan had written 'Eve Of Destruction' almost entirely himself. It was not necessarily political, but attacked the violence and hypocrisy that seemed to be dominating the headlines; in any case it changed Sloan's life, not necessarily for the better. He split from Barri, had his own Hot 100 entry in '65 called 'The Sins Of A Family', toured with McGuire to England and, his friends said, was a different man on his return. He recorded a little, such as the album Measure of Pleasure '68, then became a recluse. In the early '70s Jimmy Webb published 'P. F' Sloan', whose lyric included 'I have been seeking P. F. Sloan/ But nobody knows where he has gone.' He spent some time in India, performed at the Bottom Line in Greenwich Village in 1985, released a couple of albums in 1993 and 2006, and wrote a musical show based on the life of Beethoven, with S. E. Feinberg). In 2012 a singer called Rumer recorded Webb's song, and Sloan appeared with her in London in 2014. That year he also released an album called My Beethoven, and published an autobiography, What’s Exactly the Matter With Me? Memoirs of a Life in Music (with Feinberg). The book covered drug abuse and mental illness, and his being institutionalized at one point. He claimed to have been beaten daily by his mother, but some of the book was unreliable; he claimed to have met James Dean two years after Dean was killed in a car wreck. Barri always regretted his friend's downward spiral, describing him as 'a major, major talent.' In January 2015, Sloan and McGuire performed 'Eve of Destruction' at a coffee house in California, a few months before his death of pancreatic cancer. |