Revisiting A&M Records No. 29
We Five: ‘You Were on My Mind’ (September ‘65)
We Five: ‘Make Someone Happy’ (December ‘67)
Backtracking here to pair this SF ensemble’s debut sensation with the overly delayed follow-up that didn’t arrive until the quintet was breaking up, at least temporarily. As the horribly written back-cover notes indicate, the latter album was reason for fans to be both glad for their return yet sad that ‘(t)here is this album and there will be no more albums because there is no more We 5 [sic].’
That tone seems overly dramatic, applicable only if, say, the Beatles had split up sooner than ’70. But I also think it was easier to get hyperbolic about the slightest success stories back then, convincing record buyers of a band’s relevance when it barely had any.
Not that We Five were so insignificant. The Independent’s revisionist assessment that they bridged the gap between Peter, Paul & Mary and the Mamas & the Papas is spot-on.
By some accounts they were the first group from the nascent San Francisco folk-rock scene to score a smash when their uptempo rethinking of Ian & Sylvia’s ‘You Were on My Mind’ nearly topped the charts in ’65 and nabbed them a deserved Grammy nomination against the Fab Four. (They both lost to the Anita Kerr Quartet.)
Ironically, none of them were originally from the Bay Area; that’s merely where We Five met. Most, like founding member Michael Stewart (brother of KingTrio fixture John Stewart), hailed from SoCal’s Pomona/Claremont area, while vocalist Beverly Bivens (her instrument listed as ’throat’ on debut) is a native of Santa Ana and attended the same high school as my parents, as did Diane Keaton.
In the annals of OC music history, decades before No Doubt and the Offspring made the region ripe for platinum-mining, Bivens remains a notable name — certainly not as important or accomplished as contemporaries like Bill Medley or Dick Dale, but a breakthrough talent all the same.
Bivens’s commanding voice is what makes these LPs worth hearing, for as We Five’s big hit illustrates, she had some serious range — low contralto to high soprano.
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Whether the material is Sondheim or Gershwin, something new from one of the Stewarts or an established folk classic from Ewan MacColl (their lovely version of ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ predates Roberta Flack’s by two years), Bivens is never less than captivating. She’s gentler/cuter in her approach to first-album bits like ‘Tonight’ and ‘Small World’ (not the Disney tune), but building on trends of the time she stretches and challenges herself on the follow-up.
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Right off the bat too. Their rendition of ‘Let’s Get Together,’ revamped by the Youngbloods for a hit in ’69, and especially her performance of the Judy Henske staple ‘High Flying Bird,’ which plays like a prototype for Patti Smith’s ‘Dancing Barefoot’ — those are the real grabbers, along with politely edgier forays like ‘Five Will Get You Ten’ and ‘Poet.’ (Not that I’m immune to softer takes on ‘Make Someone Happy’ and ‘Our Day Will Come,’ on par with the best stuff from the Sandpipers.)
But free-spirited Bivens — now the sole surviving member of the quintet, despite having been its principal outsider — had had enough of stardom, touring and the amorous attention of her bandmates. So she split, almost entirely.
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Other mismanagement factors attributed to the death of We Five (and their subsequent resurrection with a different female singer two years later) but Bivens wanting out was the first domino to fall.
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She’s lived a happy and healthy life ever since, and once in a while dipped a toe into vocal waters to help sing jingles in the ‘70s or make a rare live appearance in 2009. May she live to 100 and beyond. Still a shame we didn’t get to hear what further impact she might have had on music to come, with or without We Five.