The record
At a glance
- Artist
- The Electric Prunes
- Released
- August 1967
- Album
- Second studio album
- Original tracks
- Twelve
- Label
- Reprise R / RS 6262
- Producer
- Dave Hassinger
Why it matters
The band writes itself into the foreground
Underground gives the Electric Prunes substantially more authorship than the debut, with group members writing most of the twelve-track programme. James Lowe and Mark Tulin form the central partnership behind The Great Banana Hoax, Wind-Up Toys, It's Not Fair and Hideaway. Ken Williams shares Children of Rain, while Lowe alone writes Captain Glory and drummer Michael Weakley co-writes Long Day's Flight with Don Yorty. Three Tucker-Mantz songs and the Goffin-King I Happen to Love You keep professional outside writing in the picture without controlling the whole album.
The original LP contains twelve tracks. Everybody Knows You're Not in Love and You've Never Had It Better are later CD additions, not tracks thirteen and fourteen of the 1967 album.
The sessions capture personnel movement: Preston Ritter and returning drummer Weakley both play, while Mike Gannon arrives as James Spagnola leaves. The band arranges the album itself, and Hassinger's reduced attention leaves more room for its effects, organ and unusual character songs. Underground matters as the last complete album where the early Electric Prunes' own ensemble imagination governs the programme.
California, 1967
Two hit singles buy creative space but not stability
The debut's two charting singles gave the band visibility but little control over most of its first LP songbook. The group recorded Underground at American Recording Company in North Hollywood during 1967. Dave Hassinger remained producer, with Richie Podolor and Bill Cooper engineering. Reprise released mono R 6262 and stereo RS 6262 editions in August 1967.
Ritter left during the sessions and original drummer Weakley returned, dividing the drum performances. Spagnola departed near the end of recording; Gannon completed a limited part of the album. The original side break follows I Happen to Love You, giving each side six tracks. Mass in F Minor followed under the Electric Prunes name but introduced David Axelrod's composed religious programme and extensive outside performance.
Changing sessions
A core group changes during the sessions
Lowe moves from interpreter to principal album writer, while autoharp and harmonica widen the band's texture beyond standard garage instrumentation. Williams makes effects a recurring structural voice and co-writes the gentler Children of Rain. Tulin's bass anchors the fuzz sound while organ and piano push Dr. Do-Good and I beyond guitar-only psychedelia. Spagnola remains the principal rhythm guitarist through most of the LP despite leaving during its completion.
Gannon's contribution belongs to the session transition and should not be generalized across all twelve tracks. Ritter and Weakley divide the drum work; neither can accurately be named as sole album drummer. Weakley's co-writing role on Long Day's Flight makes his return compositional as well as performative. The self-arrangement credit distinguishes Underground from the debut's stronger dependence on producer-selected material and outside orchestration.
The second album
Fuzz, Vox organ, character songs and extended unease
The Great Banana Hoax makes absurdity heavy through a four-minute fuzz-and-organ arrangement. Children of Rain replaces attack with folk-rock harmony and reflective weather imagery. Wind-Up Toys turns childhood objects into mechanical unease. Antique Doll gives Tucker and Mantz's object-song writing a darker, more fragile frame.
It's Not Fair compresses grievance into hard rhythmic repetition. I Happen to Love You gives Goffin and King's song a forceful band reading. Dr. Do-Good uses a distorted character voice and prototype steel-guitar colour. I expands a Tucker-Mantz composition beyond five minutes through organ, guitar and unstable self-assertion.
Hideaway makes retreat compact and urgent. Big City turns scale and anonymity into driving garage rock. Captain Glory presents Lowe's comic hero in just over two minutes. Long Day's Flight closes with forward motion, layered guitar and the changed lineup's longest journey.
Track guide
Twelve original tracks before two later singles
The Great Banana Hoax
Lowe and Tulin open with an absurd proposition treated at full electrical weight. Fuzz guitar, organ and a long compact form make the joke less novelty than destabilizing announcement: this time the band defines the album's entrance.
Children of Rain
Goodie and Ken Williams move into softer harmony and reflective folk-rock. Rain changes from psychedelic effect to environment, proving the group can reduce intensity without surrendering its own writing voice.
Wind-Up Toys
Lowe and Tulin turn mechanical playthings into a disturbing miniature. Repetition suggests programmed motion, while guitar effects and vocal pressure gradually strip childhood objects of innocence.
Antique Doll
Tucker and Mantz contribute another object-centred song, but the Prunes emphasize age, fragility and stillness. It complements Wind-Up Toys without repeating its mechanical attack.
It's Not Fair
The Lowe-Tulin complaint is concise and physically direct. Bass, drums and guitar transform grievance into insistence, clearing space before the side's only Goffin-King composition.
I Happen to Love You
Goffin and King's song receives one of the album's strongest outside-material performances. Lowe sings the declaration without softness, and the band closes side one by making professional pop writing fit its own dense attack.
Dr. Do-Good
A Tucker-Mantz character opens side two in a deliberately grotesque voice. Williams' unusual guitar colour and the arrangement's abrupt responses turn benevolence into comic menace.
I
The album's longest track stretches self-definition across organ, guitar, rhythm and repeated vocal presence. Rather than telling a character story, it lets identity become an unstable five-minute sonic field.
Hideaway
Lowe and Tulin contract the scale after I. Retreat becomes a fast-moving decision rather than passive shelter, with the compact arrangement restoring single-length urgency.
Big City
The Walsh composition sets human movement against urban size. Driving rhythm and guitar maintain outward motion, contrasting Hideaway's private withdrawal with exposure to a larger environment.
Captain Glory
Lowe's compact character song punctures heroic scale through comic detail. Its economy prevents the captain from becoming a concept figure and prepares the album to leave character theatre behind.
Long Day's Flight
Weakley and Yorty close with the record's final journey. Layered guitar, renewed drum presence and a lengthier arc turn flight into accumulated fatigue and momentum, ending the original programme without a tidy return.
Objects and selves
Hoax, childhood, control, identity and flight
Objects dominate the first side: banana, toys and doll shift between absurdity, mechanism and fragility. Rain, hideaway, city and flight organize changing relations between shelter and exposure. Dr. Do-Good and Captain Glory use named roles to satirize authority and heroism. I and It's Not Fair give selfhood two scales: extended assertion and compressed complaint.
Love enters through direct declaration rather than the debut's repeated measurement and bargaining. Childhood imagery repeatedly becomes uncanny once electricity and repetition enter. The album has no continuous story, but its band-led writing creates a more consistent vocabulary of unstable objects and identities. Underground describes creative location as much as literal place: the group works beneath its hit image to define itself.
Reprise 6262
Reprise 6262 and the twelve-song boundary
Reprise issued Underground in mono as R 6262 and stereo as RS 6262. The original LP contains twelve tracks divided six per side. I Happen to Love You closes side one and Long Day's Flight closes side two.
The group receives the arrangement credit. The two songs appended to common CD and digital editions were period singles but do not alter the 1967 LP boundary.
August 1967
A more personal album without a comparable hit
Rhino dates Underground to August 1967, only months after the debut. The album did not produce a hit comparable to I Had Too Much to Dream or Get Me to the World on Time. Dr. Do-Good appeared as a single but only reached the lower edge of the national listing.
Greater authorial control produced a more coherent album without guaranteeing equivalent sales. Retrospective reviews commonly value the group writing while noting that no new song matched the debut's title hit. The later shift to Mass in F Minor made Underground's status as the early band's group-led studio finale increasingly important.
The group-led finale
The original group's studio swan song
Underground preserves the fullest 1967 studio account of Lowe and Tulin as album writers. The Great Banana Hoax, Hideaway and Long Day's Flight broaden the band's reputation beyond its two debut hits. Children of Rain reveals a melodic, harmony-led side that generic garage labels can miss. I demonstrates that the group could sustain a longer studio form before Axelrod's externally composed projects.
The changing drummer and rhythm-guitar credits document instability already inside the sessions. Mass in F Minor should not be used to retroactively describe Underground as an Axelrod or session-musician album. Later fourteen-track versions are useful archives but alter the force of Long Day's Flight as the ending. The album's legacy is creative autonomy achieved for a short period, imperfectly and audibly.
Original programme
Fourteen digital tracks, twelve on the LP
The original album contains twelve tracks, not fourteen. I Happen to Love You closes side one. Long Day's Flight is the original ending. Everybody Knows You're Not in Love is a later appendix.
You've Never Had It Better is also outside the LP. Ritter and Weakley both drum on the album. Spagnola and Gannon belong to different parts of the sessions. Mass in F Minor uses a materially different creative and personnel model.
A listening path
Follow the six/six architecture
- Hear the Banana Hoax as a band-written opening declaration.
- Follow rain into the paired uncanny objects.
- Let I Happen to Love You close the original first side.
- Restart with Dr. Do-Good's grotesque theatre.
- Give I its full extended identity.
- Move from hiding through city to comic captain.
- Stop after Long Day's Flight before playing the singles.
Research trail
Sources and further reading
- Official Underground album history — Rhino
- Underground track list, credits and review — AllMusic
- Warner album history and programme — Apple Music
- Rhino original-album sequence — MusicBrainz
- Underground personnel and session transition — Electric Prunes archive
- Current Warner fourteen-track programme — Spotify
- James Lowe interview on the Underground sessions — It's Psychedelic Baby Magazine