Garage rock wasn’t called that when bands were actually playing it in the mid-’60s — the name came a few years later, when the “Nuggets” collection was released in 1972 to collect what were by then forgotten tracks. (Yes, kids, that’s how quickly popular music evolved back then.)
The name referred to music that critics would consider raw, crude and primitive, and derived from the fact that a lot of teenage bands had no play to practice but their parents’ garage. In that regard the Electric Prunes might have been the essential garage rock band — they were actually discovered while practicing in somebody’s garage.
A real estate agent named Barbara Harris who was walking by heard them rehearsing. She introduced herself and told the musicians that she knew someone in the record business, which got them their first big break. They cut a few singles that flopped before they recorded a tune in late 1966 that had been originally given to Jerry Vale, of all people. His version is lost, but it surely didn’t include fuzzed, backwards guitar.
The song peaked at No. 11 on the Hot 100 in early 1967, but achieved greater fame when Lenny Kaye made it the lead track on “Nuggets.” It’s been considered a quintessential relic of the psychedelic era ever since.
