Early Life and The Strawberry Alarm Clock
Weitz was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1945 and at 6 months old moved to California. He took up playing piano and organ at an early age and at age 20 joined a rock group called Thee Sixpence as one of the singers and the organist. Three or four years older than everyone else, he had more definite musical ideas than his bandmates, as well as a more mature and professional outlook on music, which served them well the next four years. He also found something of a kindred musical spirit in Ed King, the band's lead guitarist.
Weitz was an able composer, and for the group's 1967 single on the all American label he turned in two songs, "The Birdman of Alkatrash", written just by him, and "Incense and Peppermints", a collaboration with King. The latter, turned over to another composer by the record's producer, became a #1 national hit for the group, newly christened Strawberry Alarm Clock. For the next three years, Weitz rode a whirlwind of dizzying success and frustrating attempts at a follow-up, though he did prove the single wasn't a fluke and wasn't to the credit of the lyricist by creating a top 30 hit called "Tomorrow". Weitz played some memorable keyboard parts on their first three albums, and on S.A.C.'s album Good Morning Starshine he showed himself in collaboration with King to be an able first-time producer.
Read more about this topic: Mark Weitz
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, strawberry, alarm and/or clock:
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“Roger Thornhill: Has life been like that?
Eve Kendall: Uhm mm.
Roger Thornhill: How come?
Eve Kendall: Men like you.
Roger Thornhill: What’s wrong with men like me?
Eve Kendall: They don’t believe in marriage.
Roger Thornhill: I’ve been married twice.
Eve Kendall: See what I mean?”
—Ernest Lehman (b.1920)
“The strawberry grows underneath the nettle,
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best
Neighbored by fruit of baser quality.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Generally speaking, the political news, whether domestic or foreign, might be written today for the next ten years with sufficient accuracy. Most revolutions in society have not power to interest, still less alarm us; but tell me that our rivers are drying up, or the genus pine dying out in the country, and I might attend.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What says the Clock in the Great Clock Tower?
And all alone comes riding there
The King that could make his people stare,
Because he had feathers instead of hair.
A slow low note and an iron bell.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)