Summer in the City (song)

"Summer in the City" is a song by the American folk rock band the Lovin' Spoonful. Written by John Sebastian, Mark Sebastian and Steve Boone, the song was released as a non-album single in July 1966 and was included on the album Hums of the Lovin' Spoonful later that year. The single was the Lovin' Spoonful's fifth to break the top ten in the United States and their only to reach . A departure from the band's lighter sound, the recording features a harder rock style. The lyrics differ from most songs about the summer by lamenting the heat, contrasting the unpleasant warmth and noise of the daytime with the relief offered by the cool night, which allows for the nightlife to begin.

John Sebastian reworked the lyrics and melody of "Summer in the City" from a song written by his teenage brother Mark. Boone contributed the song's bridge while in the studio. The Lovin' Spoonful recorded "Summer in the City" in two sessions at Columbia Records' 7th Avenue Studio in New York in March 1966. Erik Jacobsen produced the sessions with assistance from engineer Roy Halee, while Artie Schroeck performed as a session musician on a Wurlitzer electric piano. The recording is an early instance in pop music of added sound effects, made up of car horns and a pneumatic drill to mimic city noises.

"Summer in the City" has since received praise from several music critics and musicologists for its changing major-minor keys and its inventive use of sound effects. The song has been covered by several artists, including Quincy Jones, whose 1973 version won the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement and has since been sampled by numerous hip hop artists.

Background and composition 

The Lovin' Spoonful completed their first two albums, Do You Believe in Magic and Daydream, over a period of six months. In need of new material for their next LP, John Sebastian, the band's principal songwriter, recalled a song composed and informally taped by his teenage brother, Mark, titled "It's a Different World". Written when Mark was 14, it featured a bossa nova-like sound and rudimentary lyrics, written in the style of soul singer Sam Cooke.

John expanded on Mark's original composition, reworking the melody and "[replacing] Mark's laconic verses with more vital, upbeat ones." John was pleased with Mark's original line, "But at night it's a different world", determining that the verse before that point needed to build up tension toward an eventual release: "I was going for the scary, minor chord, hit-the-road-Jack chord sequence that doesn't warn you of what's coming in the chorus." He later compared his resulting first verse to the tension established in Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain, which he knew from the 1940 film Fantasia. He incorporated into the verse a riff session player Artie Schroeck had played between takes during their sessions for the What's Up, Tiger Lily? soundtrack. While recording the song, the band determined that a bridge or middle eight was needed to complement John's "tense" and "free-swinging" parts, prompting bassist Steve Boone to suggest a "jazzy figure", a "piano interlude" which he later said "sounded a little bit like [American pianist] George Gershwin".

Lyrics and music 

While most songs about summer romanticize warm weather, the lyrics of "Summer in the City" lament the heat of the daytime. The combined unpleasantness of the daytime heat and noise are directly contrasted with the relief offered by nighttime, whose cooler temperatures allow for city nightlife to begin, consisting in dancing and finding dates. Sadness returns again when the singer complains that the days in the city cannot be like the nights.

The song opens with two descending notes (a flattened or minor sixth followed by a perfect fifth degree of a minor scale) played three times. This intro is played in octaves by the lead guitar, bass and electric piano. On the fourth beat of each bar, a snare and bass drum smash. While the two note descent establishes the song in a minor mode, the verse suggests a Dorian mode. The vocal of the verse is entirely minor-pentatonic. John's arpeggiation on the major V (heard at "[5] all around, [7] people lookin' [2] half dead", as noted by Everett) confirms the mode is minor before immediately shifting back to major when his voice is joined in harmony (heard at "hotter than a matchhead").

In contrast to the verse, the next section, which Everett writes "ought to be called the bridge", is a major mode, suggestive of the "different world" of the night described in the lyrics. It repeats IV–VII four times before breaking with the ii–V–ii–V chord progression suggested by Boone. The bridge further functions to emphasize the dorian quality of the next verse. The song alternates between verse and bridge again before a second break transitions to an instrumental coda, finishing the song on the major mode.

Recording 

The Lovin' Spoonful recorded "Summer in the City" in March 1966 at Columbia Records' 7th Avenue Studio in New York City. Erik Jacobsen produced the song with assistance from engineer Roy Halee. The band completed the song across two sessions; during the first, they recorded the instrumental track in four steps, beginning with drums, an organ, electric piano and rhythm guitar. John struggled to play the Wurlitzer electric piano part, leading arranger Artie Schroeck to step in as a session musician. Boone overdubbed his bass while John played autoharp, with a guitar added on another layer. The last instrumental overdub included added extra percussion; Halee placed a microphone inside a garbage can, which Yanovsky then struck the side of with a drumstick. Halee described the resultant sound as "a gigantic explosion".

Too tired to continue recording during the initial session, John instead sang his lead vocal the next night. Yanovsky and Joe Butler contributed backing vocals. After hearing the initial playback, Yanovsky complained that the song's percussion was not loud enough, expressing to Halee: "I want the drums to sound like garbage cans being thrown down a steel staircase." To increase the amount of reverb on the track, Halee placed a microphone on the eighth floor of a metal staircase and a large speaker on the ground floor. Halee later duplicated the effect with the same staircase when recording Simon & Garfunkel's 1969 single "The Boxer". The song originally closed with a loud crash caused by a kicked Fender Reverb. Displeased with this ending, Jacobsen removed it and instead inserted a copy of the last verse and chorus for an instrumental fade out.

During the sessions, the band suggested to Jacobsen that they add "city" noises to the track, such as the sound of traffic or a construction crew. During a separate session, a radio soundman brought in an assembly of taped sound effects. The group listened to the effects on a portable reel-to-reel recorder before deciding on the sound of car horns and a pneumatic drill. The effects were among the first on a pop song to employ an overlapping crossfade, an effect that had typically only been used on comedy albums. Mixing for "Summer in the City" concluded after the Lovin' Spoonful returned from Europe in May 1966.

Release and commercial performance 

Kama Sutra Records released "Summer in the City" as a single on July 4, 1966. In the U.S. and several other countries, Boone's country song "Butchie's Tune" was used as the B-side, while in other countries, "Fishin' Blues" was used. The single's release corresponded with a record heat wave in New York City – peaking in June and July at  and  in August – and came shortly after a similar heat wave experienced by Britain in the end of June. An advertisement promoting the single was published in the July 2 issue of Billboard magazine, promising it would "capture the feel... of Summer in the City". Author Jon Savage compares the ad's imagery, which depicts three silhouetted black boys playing with a fire hydrant, to that of a riot in Chicago's West Side which began on July 12 after police stopped young blacks from using a fire hydrant to cool off.

"Summer in the City" was the Lovin' Spoonful's fifth single, and one of six released between December 1965 and December 1966 that reached the top ten in the US. The release rose quickly; Billboard classified it as a breakout single across the U.S. on July 16, and it jumped from  to  on the Billboard Hot 100 on July 30. On August 13, it overtook the Troggs' "Wild Thing" to become the Lovin' Spoonful's only . It held the position for three weeks, becoming what author Jon Savage terms the "American song of the summer", before losing the  spot to Donovan's "Sunshine Superman". In addition to reaching  on Cash Box and Record World Top 100 charts, it was  in Canada and  on the U.K.'s Record Retailer Chart. "Summer in the City" was later sequenced as the closing track on the album Hums of the Lovin' Spoonful, released in November 1966.

"Summer in the City" has a harder sound than the Lovin' Spoonful's previous output. Boone later expressed pleasure that the song departed from the band's softer image, helping to quickly change the attitudes of those who asked him when they were going to make "a real rock song". While the band's next single, "Rain on the Roof", reached  on the Billboard Hot 100, both Butler and Boone felt it was a mistake to release the song as the follow-up to "Summer in the City". John contended the band ought to avoid releasing consecutive singles that sounded too similar. However, Boone worried the return to a softer sound would alienate the band's new fans. He later remarked: "I wonder how many people heard 'Rain on the Roof' on their radios in the early fall of 1966 and said, 'Oh, they're back to the wimpy shit,' and disregarded us all over again." After 1966, the band did not achieve the same level of success; Yanovsky and Boone were arrested in California in May 1966 for marijuana possession, and Yanovsky and John left the band in 1967 and 1968, respectively.

Critical reception

Contemporary reviews 

Among contemporary reviews, Cash Box magazine predicted a "sure-fire blockbuster", describing the song's "repeating hard-driving riff" as "contagious". Record World review panel selected the song as one of their three "single picks of the week", describing it as "[w]ild, experimental, hypnotic, terrific, positive in approach and a powerhouse release". In the UK, Melody Maker reviewer wrote that the song displayed the musical diversity of the Lovin' Spoonful, given its divergence in style from their earlier 1966 single, "Daydream", and predicted its inclusion on Hums of the Lovin' Spoonful would boost album sales in both the U.S. and the U.K.

In Billboard, Johnny Borders, the program director of KLIF in Dallas, reported that while the radio station's early summer rotation had been based around oldies due to the poor quality of new music, the release of "Summer in the City" improved the situation. David Dachs' 1968 book, Inside Pop, discusses the song in the context of the Lovin' Spoonful's diverse styles, while also writing its lyrics display "a hip and jazzy swing".

Retrospective assessments 

In a retrospective assessment, author Ian MacDonald categorizes "Summer in the City" as a "cutting-edge pop [record]" and one of many "futuristic singles" to appear in 1966, such as the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations", the Byrds' "Eight Miles High" and the Four Tops' "Reach Out I'll Be There", among others. He describes it as representative of a time period when recorded songs began to employ sounds and effects difficult or impossible to recreate during a live performance; when the Lovin' Spoonful played the song in concert, John was unable to both sing and play the piano part simultaneously, requiring Butler to perform the lead vocal.

Musicologist Charlie Gillett describes the song as one of the band's "evocative 'atmosphere' songs", serving as an alternative to their softer love songs through its "surprising power and intensity". Richie Unterberger similarly writes that it proved the band's ability to extend beyond "sunshine and light", praising its major-minor shifts and describing the sound effects as "particularly inventive" while "mercifully" not being overdone. Musician Chris Stamey describes the song as a "fantastic, cinematic record" and highlights the same features as Unterberger, particularly the major-minor changes which help emphasize the two different musical moods. In The New Rolling Stone Album Guide, Paul Evans also commends the sound effects and key signature changes, writing the latter retains both "a sense of wonder and deliberate naiveté".

In the judgment of author Paul Simpson, "Summer in the City" is the song for which the Lovin' Spoonful are best known, and author Robert Santelli describes it as the band's "most potent" song, its "forceful, aggressive" format more representative of rock than the band's traditional folk rock style. Authors Keith and Kent Zimmerman call it "a twentieth-century pop classic", comparing it to Gershwin's An American in Paris and Richard Rodgers' Slaughter on Tenth Avenue. Author Arnold Shaw describes the use of effects as skillful and anticipatory of those heard on the Beatles' 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, while author James E. Perone describes them as an example of audio vérité, concluding the song remains "one of the most iconic songs of summer of the sound-recording era in the United States." In 2014, Billboard ranked the song at  in a list of the top 30 summer songs, and in 2011, Rolling Stone placed it at  on the magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Appearance in media and other versions 

"Summer in the City" served as the main theme of German filmmaker Wim Wenders' first feature film, Summer in the City (1971). In opposition to the song's theme of the hot summer, it plays over a scene where the main character walks through a cold and snowy day. The song has remained relevant into the 21st century, being regularly featured in television shows, movies and advertisements.

"Summer in the City" has since been covered by numerous artists, including Styx, Joe Cocker and Isaac Hayes. Blues guitarist B. B. King covered the song on his 1972 album, Guess Who, a version critic Robert Christgau describes as "clumsy", and which Bill Dahl of AllMusic suggests indicates King's lack of new material. The American indie band Eels recorded a cover that appeared on the deluxe edition of their 2013 album, Wonderful, Glorious, later described by Boone as "spooky and cool dirge-like".

Quincy Jones recorded the song's most successful cover, released on his October 1973 album You've Got It Bad Girl. Valerie Simpson sings lead on the cover, supported by Eddie Louis on organ and Dave Grusin on electric piano. Author Bob Leszczak describes the smooth jazz version as almost unrecognizable when compared to the original, and Andy Kellman of AllMusic writes that Jones transforms the "frantic, bug-eyed energy" of the original into a "magnetically lazy drift". The cover reached 102 on Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart and won Jones the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement at the 16th Annual Grammy Awards. Jones' version has been sampled by numerous hip hop artists, including on the Pharcyde's 1992 song "Passin' Me By", which incorporates the organ intro.

Charts and certifications

Personnel 

According to Sam Richards of UNCUT magazine, except where noted:

The Lovin' Spoonful
 John Sebastian lead vocal, acoustic guitar, autoharp, keyboards
 Steve Boone bass, keyboards
 Joe Butler backing vocals, drums
 Zal Yanovsky backing vocals, lead guitar, percussion

Additional musician and production
 Artie Schroeck Wurlitzer electric piano
 Erik Jacobsen producer
 Roy Halee engineer
 Unidentified soundman sound effects

Notes

References

Citations

Bibliography

External links 
 
 

Songs about cities
1966 singles
1966 songs
The Lovin' Spoonful songs
Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles
Cashbox number-one singles
Larry Stewart (singer) songs
The Stranglers songs
Joe Cocker songs
RPM Top Singles number-one singles
The Flying Pickets songs
Songs written by John Sebastian
Song recordings produced by Erik Jacobsen
Kama Sutra Records singles
Songs about weather