The Puckett List

Examining Gary Puckett's creepy-ass discography

Greetings, Jagged Time Lapse readers!

One of the many things I’m doing with this here Substack thang is to rescue favorite articles and blog posts of mine from obscurity — pieces that, for one reason or another, are no longer available on the internet in their original form (if at all), or are languishing unread on one old blog or another.

Earlier this week, while my girlfriend and I were enjoying an evening cookout, Gary Puckett & The Union Gap’s brass-tastic “Lady Willpower” popped up on a playlist of 1968 hits that I’d put together. And it reminded me of the following post, which I wrote back in 2012 for my old blog La Vie En Robe, and which remains fondly remembered by the folks who used to read that blog. I suspect that many of you JTL subscribers will dig it as well, so I’m reproducing it here — albeit with a few additional tweaks and updates, and some vintage TV performances that significantly amplify the already prominent “Ewww” factor. Enjoy… if you dare!

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“Have sex with me while all my friends watch!”

Sometimes, when the shuffled selections of my iPod [2023 Editor: Hey, remember those?] intersect with music-geek conversations I’m having with friends in certain corners of the internet, I find myself considering the strange case of Gary Puckett.

Born in 1942 in Hibbing, Minnesota, the same small mining town where Bob Dylan grew up, Puckett went on to become a label-mate of the Mighty Zimm’s on Columbia Records, though their records occupied entirely different parts of the musical/cultural spectrum, to say the least.

Though one could argue that Gary Puckett and the Union Gap were un-credited/underappreciated purveyors of what would come to be known as “horn rock,” their music was never considered anywhere as hip as that of horn rock practitioners Chicago, Blood Sweat & Tears, Chase, the Ides of March or even fellow Columbia recording artists (and fellow Civil War uniform wearers) The Buckinghams. It was tuneful and commercial as hell, though, with Gary's big, burly, man-tastic voice soaring through one catchy, dinner theater-worthy chorus after another.

I first heard Gary Puckett when I was 12, via my Aunt Geri’s 45 of “Lady Willpower”. The vocals seemed kind of square, yet I couldn't resist getting swept up in the record’s thrilling, horn-powered surges. A week or so later, I heard “Over You” on local oldies station KRLA, and immediately thought, “Hey, it’s ‘Lady Willpower’!” before realizing that it was a different song. As I would come to realize, all of Gary Puckett’s hits actually kind of sounded the same.

What I didn't realize at the time was just how fucking creepy Gary Puckett’s hits actually were; that particular lightbulb wouldn't go off over my head until the late ’90s, when I saw him perform them all in the space of about 45 minutes during an oldies show at the Greek Theater. (His set also included a medley of Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” and “Fire,” which really had to be heard/seen to be believed. Let’s just say that none of my psilocybin hallucinations ever conjured up anything as mind-warping as a mullet-wearing, Miami Vice-suited Gary Puckett performing a two-handed tapping “shredder” solo on a white Stratocaster.)

That evening at the Greek, I had an epiphany in which I realized that all of Gary Puckett’s hits could basically be broken down into the following categories:

HAVE SEX WITH ME

“Lady Willpower” and “Let's Give Adam and Eve Another Chance” are the most obvious ones in this category — though, as with many of Puckett’s songs, “Lady Willpower” also raises questions about the legality of his love interest. The lines “Did no one ever tell you the facts of life?/Well there’s so much you have to learn” were such a blatant allusion to his Nosferatu-like taste for virgins that the Ed Sullivan Show censors made him change “facts” to “way” before they’d broadcast the performance.

I HAVE HAD SEX WITH YOU

“Over You” and “This Girl Is A Woman Now” being the primary offenders in this category. The latter contains the completely foul line, “This giiirl tasted looove,” which made me laugh so hard when he delivered it at the Greek that I literally spit beer through my nose.

DO NOT HAVE SEX WITH HIM

The deeply paranoid “Woman, Woman” (which could have easily been subtitled “Have You Got Cheating On Your Mind?”) and “Don't Give In to Him” fall squarely into this category. Of the latter song’s line, “...because he will only ask for more,” my dear friend Jason wonders, “What the hell does that mean? Anal?”

YOU ARE TOO YOUNG TO HAVE SEX WITH ME

“Young Girl” — the 1968 hit that somehow topped the charts in Britain, and was only stiff-armed from the top spot here by Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay” and Bobby Goldsboro’s exceedingly maudlin “Honey” — has to be Exhibit A in any examination of the creepazoid aspects of the Puckett discography. The immortal lines “With all the charms of a woman/You’ve kept the secrets of your youth” back up my long-held belief that “charms” was once pop songwriter code for “boobs”. The girls in “Lady Willpower” and “This Girl Is A Woman Now” would probably pull both of those songs into this category as well, if somebody had only bothered to check their IDs.

Now, it should be noted that the inherent creepiness of Gary Puckett’s hits wasn't entirely Gary's fault — the above songs were all penned by outside songwriters, including his producer Jerry Fuller, who wrote “Young Girl,” “Lady Willpower” and “Over You”. But Gary sure did sell those songs… and thanks to a nose-holding trawl through the “deep cuts” in the Puckett catalog, I've unearthed some some interesting variations on the aforementioned themes:

HE'S HAVING SEX WITH HER

“His Other Woman,” the flip side of “This Girl is a Woman Now,” finds The Puck trying to mack on a woman whose lover is being unfaithful.

HAVE SEX WITH ME BEHIND HER BACK

“Daylight Stranger,” the Puckett-penned flip of “Lady Willpower,” finds our hero seeking nocturnal respite from a loveless marriage in the arms of another.

THEY HAVE HAD SEX WITH YOU

“The Pleasure of You,” the Jerry Fuller-penned flip of “This Girl Is A Woman Now,” manages to noxiously combine the horny pleading of “Lady Willpower” and the pedophilic yuckiness of “Young Girl” (“Though you were a child/Nature had blessed you ahead of your time...”) in the tender tale of a woman who’d already slept with most of the guys in town before she hooked up with The Puck.

And finally, there's “The Beggar,” the B-side of “Let’s Give Adam and Eve Another Chance”. Puckett co-wrote this one, which is almost Scott Walker-esque in its baroque lyrics and overwrought delivery, yet also features a twangy guitar line reminiscent of Elvis Presley’s “Edge of Reality” or The Mamas and Papas’ “Straight Shooter”. The song — which is now probably my favorite thing in the entire Puckett catalog — finds the titular character wandering the pitiless city streets while bemoaning the tragic loss of his wife and child. Which is tremendously sad, of course; but taken within the context of the rest of his material, lines like “The beggar cries ‘Lord, I am so lonely’/The darkness answers back with memories” make me suspect that the underlying message here is actually…

SOMEONE, ANYONE, PLEASE HAVE SEX WITH ME

This performance of “The Beggar” was originally broadcast on the December 3, 1969 episode of The Jack Benny Show, which also included a duet between The Puck and Nancy Sinatra on Blood, Sweat & Tears’ “Spinning Wheel”.

I find the latter number especially interesting, because it reinforces what I was saying earlier about how Gary Puckett and the Union Gap are an underappreciated horn rock (or, in this case, “horn-dog rock”) outfit. “Spinning Wheel” is, of course, one of the acknowledged classics of horn rock, and Gary handles his vocal parts with ease — and happily without all the David Clayton Thomas/Jim Peterik “desperately in need of a good stool softener” grunting that was so ubiquitous to the genre.

It’s also interesting to note that The Puck seems to have no chemistry at all with the lovely Ms. Sinatra — though I guess that's not entirely surprising, given that she was 29 at the time of the filming, which would have put her out of his, er, “target demographic” by at least a dozen years.

Have a great weekend, folks… and try not to have sex with Gary Puckett.

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