PSYCHAMERIICA PARTT 3

Richard Morton Jack concludes his threepart trip through the most far-out delights of America’s psychedelic era

AUTOSALVAGE

Autosalvage (RCA LPM / LSP 3940) March 1968 £40

This short-lived New York quartet was led by Pennsylvanian singer-guitarist Tom Danaher, along with lead guitarist Rick Turner, bassist Skip Boone and drummer/ multi-instrumentalist Darius Lanoue Davenport, all of whom had unusual family backgrounds and musical pedigree. As Lilian Roxon put it in her 1970 Rock Encyclopaedia: “This group was started in the middle of 1966 by Thomas Danaher, who was a folk and bluegrass freak, and Darius LaNoue Davenport, who came from a musical family. Lead guitarist Rick Turner, son of a poet and a painter, had worked with Ian & Sylvia and then a long line of rock groups. Bassist Skip Boone is the brother of Steve Boone, the bassist for The Lovin’ Spoonful.”

As Turner subsequently put it, “We were all tied into the Lovin’ Spoonful scene, but we were the oddballs. We were weird, we were edgy. We were a San Francisco band that didn’t know it. In San Francisco we would have done great, probably survived.”

Having opened for The Mothers Of Invention at NY’s Café-Au-Go-Go and Balloon Farm clubs in the autumn of 1966, they caught Frank Zappa’s ear. He was especially enamoured of their song …

by Richard Morton Jack
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