Darling Be Home Soon

"Darling Be Home Soon"
U.S. picture sleeve
Single by the Lovin' Spoonful
from the album You're a Big Boy Now soundtrack
B-side	"Darlin' Companion"
Released	February 1967 (1967-02)[1]
Recorded	October 1966 (1966-10)[2]
Genre	Folk rock[3]
Length	3:32
Label	Kama Sutra
Songwriter(s)	John Sebastian
Producer(s)	Erik Jacobsen
The Lovin' Spoonful singles chronology
"Nashville Cats" (1966) "Darling Be Home Soon" (1967) "Six O'Clock" (1967)
Audio
"Darling Be Home Soon" on YouTube

"Darling Be Home Soon" is a song written by John Sebastian of the Lovin' Spoonful for the soundtrack of the 1966 Francis Ford Coppola film You're a Big Boy Now. It appeared on the Lovin' Spoonful's 1967 soundtrack album You're a Big Boy Now. Sebastian performed his composition at Woodstock; it was the fourth song out of the five he performed at the 1969 music festival in White Lake, New York.

Writing and recording

Coppola commissioned Sebastian to write music for the film, and for one scene wanted a song with a similar mood and tempo to "Monday, Monday" by the Mamas and the Papas. Sebastian said that he wrote the song as "pleas for a partner to spend a few minutes talking before leaving.... [but] you never knew if the other person was actually there listening or was already gone". Coppola approved the song, and it was recorded by the band but with session musician Billy LaVorgna rather than Joe Butler on drums. The arrangement was by Artie Schroeck. After the recording was completed and the musicians left, the producer, Erik Jacobsen, discovered that an engineer had mistakenly erased Sebastian's vocal track, so he had to re-record it the next day. Sebastian said: "What you hear on the record is me, a half hour after learning that my original vocal track had been erased. You can even hear my voice quiver a little at the end. That was me thinking about the vocal we lost and wanting to kill someone."^[4] It has been described as "...one of the most heartfelt songs about being away from a loved one, written from the point of view of a musician on the road writing a letter."^[5]

Billboard described the song as a "medium-paced rock ballad given that 'extra special' Lovin' Spoonful treatment" and should be a "smash" on the Billboard Hot 100.^[6] The critic Richard Goldstein, one of the earliest champions of the Spoonful,^[7] criticized the song as the band's first disappointing single.^[8] In his review for The Village Voice, he disparaged the song as a tribute to Bob Dylan which "lacks the master's raunchiness".^[8] The Beatles regularly praised the Spoonful in interviews,^[9] but when Paul McCartney reviewed the latest singles for Melody Maker in February 1967,^[10] he criticized "Darling Be Home Soon" for its instrumentation, which he thought "very ordinary" and "corny".^[11] While complementing Sebastian's vocal, McCartney hypothesized that the film studio pressured the band to keep the song's arrangement "flimsy".^[11]

Personnel

According to John Sebastian:^[12]

The Lovin' Spoonful

• John Sebastian – vocals, acoustic guitar
• Zal Yanovsky – electric guitar
• Steve Boone – bass guitar

Additional musicians

• Bill LaVorgna – drums
• David "Fathead" Newman – saxophone
• Artie Schroeck – arrangement
• Clark Terry – flügelhorn
• Unidentified session musicians – orchestra

Charts

Weekly chart performance

Chart (1967)	Peak position
Canada Top Singles (RPM)[13]	8
Netherlands (Veronica Top 40)[14]	15
Netherlands (Hilversum 3 Top 30)[15]	16
U.K. (Disc and Music Echo)[16][nb 1]	34
U.K. (Melody Maker)[19]	45
U.K. (Record Retailer)[20]	44
U.S. Billboard Hot 100[21]	15
U.S. Cash Box Top 100[22]	15
U.S. Record World 100 Top Pops[23]	11

Other recordings of the song

• 1967 – Bobby Darin, whose version reached #93 on the US charts^[24] and #17 in Canada.^[25]
• 1969 – Joe Cocker, on his album Joe Cocker!^[26]
• 1972 – The Association on their album Waterbeds in Trinidad!. #104 US Billboard, #90 US Cashbox.^[27] #61 Canada^[28]
• 1972 – Slade did a live version on their album Slade Alive.^[29]
• 1993 – The Barra MacNeils on their album Closer to Paradise, #23 Canadian charts,^[30] and Let Loose (1996, #65 UK as a single, and on the album Rollercoaster).^[31]
• 2012 – Tedeschi Trucks Band did a live version on their album Everbody’s Talkin’.^[32]

Notes

1. The single debuted at number 34 on Disc and Music Echo's Top 50 chart for the week ending March 25, 1967.^[16] In the magazine's next issue, the editors condensed their chart to a Top 30,^[17] and the single did not appear on it.^[18]

References

1. Anon. (1990). Anthology (Liner notes). The Lovin' Spoonful. Rhino. R2 70944.
2. Boone & Moss 2014, p. 164.
3. Unterberger 2003, p. 61.
4. Myers 2017, pp. 72–79.
5. Matthew Greenwald. "Darling Be Home Soon – Joe Cocker | Song Info". AllMusic. Retrieved 2016-07-26.
6. "Spotlight Singles" (PDF). Billboard. February 4, 1967. p. 16. Retrieved 2021-03-01.
7. Heylin 2007, p. 205.
8. Goldstein, Richard (February 2, 1967). "Pop Eye: Alive and Well". The Village Voice. pp. 19, 32.
9. Turner 2017, p. 261.
10. Hjort 2008, p. 121.
11. McCartney, Paul (February 25, 1967). "Beatle Blind Date: Paul McCartney reviews the new pop singles". Melody Maker. pp. 12–13.
12. Myers 2017, p. 77.
13. "RPM 100". RPM. April 8, 1967. Retrieved January 24, 2024.
14. "Nederlandse Top 40 – The Lovin' Spoonful" (in Dutch). Dutch Top 40. Retrieved January 24, 2024.
15. "The Lovin' Spoonful – Darling Be Home Soon" (in Dutch). Dutch Single Top 100. Retrieved January 24, 2024.
16. "Chart Topper Top 50". Disc and Music Echo. March 25, 1967. p. 3.
17. Coleman, Ray (April 1, 1967). "DISC Chart switches to Top 30". Disc and Music Echo. p. 2.
18. "Disc and Echo Top 30". Disc and Music Echo. April 1, 1967. p. 3.
19. "Melody Maker Pop 50". Melody Maker. March 25, 1967. p. 2.
20. "Lovin' Spoonful". Official Charts Company. Retrieved January 26, 2024.
21. "The Lovin' Spoonful Chart History (Hot 100)". Billboard. Archived from the original on May 21, 2022. Retrieved January 24, 2024.
22. "Cash Box Top 100 – Week of March 18, 1967". Cash Box. March 18, 1967. p. 4.
23. "Record World 100 Top Pops – Week of March 25, 1967". Record World. March 25, 1967. p. 23.
24. https://www.billboard.com/artist/bobby-darin/chart-history/asi/ Billboard Hot 100 chart, Bobby Darin
25. "RPM Top 100 Singles - August 26, 1967" (PDF).
26. "www.allmusic.com". allmusic.com. Retrieved April 13, 2023.
27. "Bubbling Under the Hot 100", Billboard, June 3, 1972, p. 37
28. "RPM Top 100 Singles - June 24, 1972" (PDF).
29. "www.allmusic.com". allmusic.com. Retrieved April 13, 2023.
30. "RPM Top 100 Singles - January 17, 1994" (PDF).
31. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/the-barra-mcneils-emc "Barra MacNeils", The Canadian Encyclopedia
32. "www.allmusic.com". allmusic.com. Retrieved April 6, 2024.

Sources

• Boone, Steve; Moss, Tony (2014). Hotter Than a Match Head: My Life on the Run with The Lovin' Spoonful. Toronto: ECW Press. ISBN 978-1-77041-193-7 – via Google Books.
• Heylin, Clinton (2007). The Act You've Known for All These Years: The Life, and Afterlife, of Sgt. Pepper. Edinburgh: Canongate. ISBN 978-1-84195-955-9 – via the Internet Archive.
• Hjort, Christopher (2008). So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star: The Byrds Day-by-Day 1965–1973. London: Jawbone Press. ISBN 978-1-906002-15-2.
• Myers, Marc (2017). Anatomy of a Song: The Oral History of 45 Iconic Hits That Changed Rock, R&B and Pop. London: Grove Press. ISBN 978-1-61185-959-1 – via the Internet Archive.
• Turner, Steve (2017). Beatles '66: The Revolutionary Year. New York City: Ecco. ISBN 978-0-06-247558-9 – via the Internet Archive.
• Unterberger, Richie (2003). Eight Miles High: Folk-Rock's Flight from Haight-Ashbury to Woodstock. San Francisco: Backbeat Books. ISBN 0-87930-743-9.