Song of the Day 9/25: The Association, “Everything That Touches You”

No group suffered a sharper drop in popularity when rock music turned from psychedelic pop to blues-based hard rock than the Association. Terry Kirkman, one of the group’s founders and composer of its biggest hit, died Saturday at age 83.

Retroactively lumped under the label of sunshine pop, the Association had its roots in the folk movement. After a 13-member New Christy Minstrels-style singing group called the Men broke up in 1965, six of them, including Kirkman, stayed together. Most were multi-instrumentalists, but their intricate harmonies were their trademark (as was common at the time, session musicians played the instruments on their early albums).

Kirkman, who played with Frank Zappa before Zappa joined the band that became the Mothers, played flute and shared lead vocals in the Association with Jim Yester, older brother of the Lovin’ Spoonful’s Jerry Yester. The band had five Top 10 singles between 1966 and 1968. Three were by outside songwriters. Kirkman wrote the other two, including “Cherish,” the group’s 1966 No. 1 hit.

Kirkman also wrote “Everything That Touches You,” their final hit, which reached No. 10 in 1968. As you can see in this clip from the Smothers Brothers’ variety show, where they debuted the song, the group had by then ditched their clean-cut matching outfits for a more counterculture look. Kirkman is the one wearing the light gray suit and orange ascot.

Kirkman said he wrote “Cherish,” with its unusual double-bridge structure, in a half-hour. The version on their first LP, “And Then…Along Comes the Association,” clocked in at 3:27. AM radio programmers preferred songs under three minutes long, but editing out the second “And I do/cherish you” in the coda only got it down to 3:15, so producer Curt Boettcher stole a trick from Phil Spector and stamped the time as 3:00 on the label. The song was immensely popular at the time – Billboard listed it as the No. 2 single of 1966 – but many modern listeners find its jilted-suitor lyrics creepy today.

It wasn’t long after that Smothers Brothers appearance that changing tastes consigned the Association to the bubblegum bin, and the group unraveled after bassist Brian Cole died of a heroin overdose in 1972. Kirkman left a month later, though he returned when the band reformed in 1979 before leaving for good in 1984. After he left the music business Kirkman spent many years working as a substance abuse counselor. The Association, down to just one original member, Jules Alexander, still performs on the oldies circuit.