Tag: Lon and Derrek Van Eaton

Oh, Brother!

It’s been over four years since I first posted something about Lon & Derrek Van Eaton. Their debut album, the brilliantly varied Brother, has been a favorite of mine since I bought it high school, and it’s one of the reasons why I keep a couple of turntables working. Lots of memories linked to this vinyl disc! And now I’m very pleased that Brother is finally out on CD, with plenty of bonus tracks.

A minute ago I started listening, and their original demo track, “Warm Woman”, the recording that caught the ear of George Harrison, sounds strikingly better than it does on the LP. Sun Song sure has a lot more oomph to it. I can’t read the liner notes, however, because I don’t have the eyes I did when I was seventeen! I’ll have to dig out my stronger reading glasses.

Lon Van Eaton and Friends

I’m hoping Santa will bring me the new Best of Apple Records compilation. It includes ‘Sweet Music’, a track from ‘Brother’, Lon and Derrek Van Eaton’s album on Apple that certainly deserves a CD release. The credits for ‘Brother’ include many familiar names — George Harrison, Klaus Voormann, Ringo Starr, Jim Gordon (drums), Phil McDonald (engineer), and Clive Arrowsmith (photos).

Tonight, Lon Van Eaton will be appearing in his home state of New Jersey, at The Record Collector.

It’s nice to see that Apple Records has added a web page about Lon and Derrek.

Lon & Derek Van Eaton

Lon and Derrek van Eaton were one of the last acts signed to Apple Records and the first to record at the newly built Apple Studios. The brothers had previously been in a band called Jacobs Creek, who issued one self-titled US album on Columbia Records in 1969.

After that band split up, Lon and Derrek made a demo of ‘Sweet Music’, which they sent to Apple in New York. John Lennon heard it and was impressed. George liked it too, and it was George who called the van Eatons to ask if they would like to record for Apple.

A couple of quibbles. They’re inconsistent about the spelling of “Derek” vs. “Derrek,” and ‘Sweet Music’ is cited as the demo that was sent to Apple’s New York office. Apple’s original promotion for Lon and Derrek says they submitted a home recording, and based on the liner notes for ‘Brother’, the song would have been ‘Warm Woman’. Here’s that recording.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2010/DEC/WarmWoman.mp3|titles=Warm Woman|artists=Lon and Derrek Van Eaton]

Another ‘Applet’

Elaine Staats has forwarded a link to a new item about Lon Van Eaton. You’ll find it here. And on the Amazon link for the upcoming Best of Apple Records CD, that includes Lon and Derrek Van Eaton’s Sweet Music, there’s this promo video.

[media id=219 width=512 height=308]

Here are Lon and Derrek from after they had moved from Apple to A&M.

Fresh Apples

Later this month, Apple Records will release a pricey CD box set of non-Beatles albums from its catalog. Of wider interest is a companion collection of selected tracks. I’m happy and relieved that the song Sweet Music, from the Brother album by Lon and Derrek Van Eaton is listed, because I didn’t see it in Apple’s original announcement for the CD. Wednesday night, Lon Van Eaton talked with Randy “Now” Ellis on WTSR, at The College of New Jersey. There’s a short gap about 12:15 into the recording.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2010/OCT/WTSR_LonVanEaton.mp3]

Thanks go to Elaine Staats for the tip on the radio show, and for the link to this interview with Lon.

More vis Lon & Derrek Van Eaton

It’s always been my intention to not make my posts comprehensive. I try to keep each one focused on one thing, and provide what I can from my collection of stuff, without doing a lot of research. Tom Tastewar, who shall henceforth be called just Tastewar, because it sounds edgier, has done some checking into Lon and Derrek Van Eaton. Animated Derrek Van EatonAnimated Lon Van EatonIn this instance, a little looking on my part would have served me well, because Tastewar found a link with animated GIFs of something that was included in Brother, the Van Eaton’s Apple LP. Here’s the link. I had totally forgotten about this! It’s a strip of paper with slits, printed on both sides, that you put into a loop, placed on the turntable, and played like a zoetrope. One side had Lon, the other had Derrek. It’s the next step up from a flip book in animation technology. Mine has been lost for ages. I remember the first time I realized it was missing, but I have no idea what happened to it.

Eaton An Apple

Way back in high school, in the November 23, 1972 issue of Rolling Stone, was a review of a record by a pair of brothers, Lon and Derrek Van Eaton. Click the thumbnail picture to see a scan from my original copy of the magazine. The LP was on the Beatles’ Apple label, and it was called, fittingly, Brother. The cover looked a bit weird, with the brothers bare-chested and embracing, but the review was a rave, it was on Apple, and George Harrison was involved, so I bought it. I enjoyed the record a lot, and being very much into church at the time I liked the religious theme that ran through many of the tracks. The Van Eaton brothers had a follow-up record, but by then Apple Records as a recording studio was gone, so they were on a different label. I forget which one (A&M) because I was a totally broke college student and my record purchases were very few.

A brief account of the demise of Apple Records as anything but a logo and a legal entity (albeit a significant one, ably run by the late Neil Aspinall), is told in the memoir of recording engineer and producer Geoff Emerick, Here, There and Everywhere. Emerick also describes his involvement, or lack of it, with the recording of the Brother album.

One of George Harrison’s new signings was the Von [sic] Eaton brothers–Lon and Derrek… Harrison started out producing the brothers’ album, with me doing the engineering, but then he got fed up and frustrated, so he had his old friend Klaus Voormann take over as producer. I knew him from as far back as the Revolver days, when he’d come into the sessions to talk about the album cover he was designing. He and I just didn’t click, though, so I begged off from the project and turned the reins over to another engineer.

I’ll play a couple of tracks from the album. First, the song produced by George Harrison, “Sweet Music,” that the Rolling Stone review characterized as being similar to, and as good as, “My Sweet Lord.”

To hear this song, buy this CD.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/APR/SweetMusic.mp3]

And this is “Sun Song,” produced by Klaus Voormann.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/APR/SunSong.mp3]