![]() ![]() In exchange for not being deported, Zal named the dealer and in so doing incurred the wrath of the burgeoning counterculture. But by the time the story ran, Zal was out of the Spoonful under a cloud of marijuana smoke following a bust in San Francisco. The Star Weekly ran a cover story on our favourite Canadian pop star in early 1967 featuring recollections from family and friends including journalist Larry Zolf who recounted the time Zal lived in a downtown Toronto laundromat, or how he had driven a tractor through a building on an Israeli kibbutz. I can vividly recall the Spoonful on the Sullivan show, Zally, the clown prince of rock ‘n’ roll with a rubber frog dangling from the neck of his guitar, mugging to the audience and muscling in on Sebastian whenever the camera swung his way. The group was, for a brief moment in time, considered rivals to the Beatles and rode the toppermost of the poppermost. He and fellow Canuck Denny Doherty (later to find fame as the velvet-voiced tenor in the Mamas and the Papas, another point of sixties-era Canadian pride) had migrated to New York where, after a few false starts, Zal hooked up with John Sebastian to form the Lovin’ Spoonful. In the pre-CRTC Canadian Content world of the early sixties, Zal had, like so many others, fled Canada for greener pastures and paycheques in the United States. He became, by default, Canada’s first Beatle-era rock star and the inspiration for Canadian kids to take up the guitar, drums, organ, whatever. If Zal could make it in the pop world then surely other Canadians could too, we reckoned even someone as peculiar looking as Zal. Lord knows, finding a suitably long-haired Canadian on the pop charts in ’65 was rare, indeed, and cause for waving that new flag of ours. I’m sure I was no different from hundreds of other teenagers up here in the frozen wastelands who came to identify a sense of national pride in that rather shaggy looking fellow with the large nose and the odd-shaped guitar. Forget George Harrison or Brian Jones I wanted to be Zal Yanovsky. Within days I began the campaign to wear down my parents for a guitar. Once I discovered via Hit Parader magazine, which my Mom faithfully bought for me each month, that the Spoonful’s lead guitarist was a Canuck like me, that was it. Do You Believe in Magic was an infectious affirmation of the sheer joy of rock ‘n’ roll and a mainstay on my Seabreeze for months before Daydream replaced it. I loved the Spoonful’s music from the get-go. But how many Canadians could you possibly spot on a Sunday evening broadcast of the Ed Sullivan show? Robert Goulet? Paul Anka? Wayne and Shuster? Gisele Mackenzie? Hardly the hairy, bell-bottomed variety. There was the odd foreign interloper: Manfred Mann was from South Africa (that explained the Amish-like beard) Los Bravos was an odd mix of Germans and Spaniards Them, featuring a diminutive, fiery maned Van Morrison, had escaped from Northern Ireland the Easybeats hailed from the land down under. In the endless parade of long-haired Beatle-booted wannabes ascending or descending the pop charts on any given week in the mid sixties, most were either of British origin, Liverpudlian preferably, or American. Why? Sure, he was an innovative guitarist capable of clever country-flavoured licks and riffs, but it was more than that. He wasn’t the lead singer, not even the principal songwriter, but if you ever saw the Spoonful, even a photograph of them, you knew instinctively that Zal, with that impish twinkle, was the heart and soul of the group.īack in 1965, my hero, bar none, was Zal Yanovsky. He was, for those unacquainted with that odd, ethnic-sounding moniker (and that’s probably most of you), the lead guitarist in the Lovin’ Spoonful, a mid-sixties New York folk-rock group that enjoyed a handful of hits that remain staples of oldies radio today: Do You Believe In Magic, Daydream, You Didn’t Have To Be So Nice, Summer In The City. In the annals of pop music history, Zal Yanovsky’s name is not likely to elicit more than a passing reference, if that. For most editors the report scarcely warranted more than a paragraph or two. The wire services carried the story across the country: sixties-era guitarist turned chic restauranteur dead at 58. Zalman Yanovsky died last Friday at his home in Kingston, Ontario of an apparent heart attack. Do You Believe In Magic? Zal Yanovsky Helped Make It ![]()
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