Chapter 1: If Only You Believe Like I Believe Marty Balin was a single-minded creature from the day he was born. All he ever wanted was to express himself artistically -- his way. Some called him a loner, moody, weird, an egotist, but he had no time to waste with that. Marty didn't suffer fools gladly.
Marty Balin: I've always had the same mind, the same consciousness. I just couldn't wait till my body grew up to my mind. I was totally aware of who I am, what I wanted to do and what I was going to do.
By high school, he was accomplished enough as a painter to earn a scholarship, talented enough as a dancer and actor to handle both Shakespeare and musicals. But more than anything, the kid could sing. Marty, his mother once said, could whistle a tune before he could even speak.
Marty's father, Joseph Buchwald, had also been an iconoclast, ambitious and determined. Joe's parents, Samuel and Celia, had, like hundreds of thousands of persecuted eastern European Jews during the early part of the 1900s, shipped out to America with little more than a promise in hand. They settled eventually in Cincinnati, where Samuel found work within the family trade of tailoring. Joe was born there in 1917 and married an Episcopalian orphan girl born Catherine Eugenia Talbot. Jean, as she was called, also hailed from Cincinnati, where a couple named Charles and Magdalene Edmonds had adopted her.
Joe and Jean remained in Cincinnati, where their two children were born, first a girl, Marilyn Joan, in 1938 and, on January 30, 1942, a boy, Martyn Jerel Buchwald.
If the Buchwalds' interfaith marriage was a problem for others, Joe didn't lose any sleep over it. Although Joe's parents had instilled in him the traditions and beliefs of Judaism, he couldn't stand the discipline religion demanded. Religion divided people, and he believed in bringing them together. The Buchwalds judged others by who they were, not by the God they worshipped -- or didn't worship.
When Marty was young, his father took him to jazz concerts, where he witnessed Louis Armstrong and, on another occasion, a fierce drum battle between Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich. Sitting up front, Marty stared bug-eyed as the spotlights darted from one musician to the next. He was transfixed by the effect the music and the lights had upon the audience. As soon as he was old enough, he told himself, he would be up there too.
It didn't take long. Both of the Buchwald kids loved to express themselves, but Marty was unstoppable. When Joan, as Marty's sister preferred to be called, took tap dancing lessons, her kid brother watched like a hawk and quickly picked up the moves. Soon he was adept enough to join his sister in shows, often the only boy dancer in the troupe.
Marty also painted and was crazy about the movies and the theater. He performed whenever and wherever someone would listen -- acting, singing, dancing -- especially after the family relocated to California in the late '40s. They hadn't planned on living in San Francisco, but Marty had been a sickly child, suffering from a heart murmur and a bronchial condition, and the Buchwalds hoped that the fresh, dry air of Phoenix would cure him. But there was no work for Joe in Arizona so the Buchwalds pushed westward, first to Los Angeles and then north. Living in a predominantly black neighborhood in the city of Richmond, across the bay from San Francisco, Marty was drawn to gospel, the earthy sounds of early rhythm and blues and the street-corner vocal harmony style later known as doo-wop.
In the 1950s Joe found work in San Francisco as a lithographer. The family settled in the Haight-Ashbury district, years before the arrival of the flower children.
Joan (Buchwald) Benton: It was just a little neighborhood, kind of pleasant, with not a whole hell of a lot going on.
All the while, Marty performed, whether in a church choir or a local production of The Nutcracker Suite. His infatuation with the world of the arts expanded as he reached his teens, and he took his first steps toward becoming a professional, landing jobs as a dancer and playing the role of Action when a touring company of West Side Story came to town. In the audience one night was Bill Thompson, who later became Marty's roommate and eventually Jefferson Airplane's manager.
Bill Thompson: Marty was considered kind of unusual at that time. He was in a gang, the Lairds. He tried to act tough, but he wasn't; he was the kind of guy that, when he'd get mad at someone, would say something like, "You knucklehead!"
By 1962, Marty, now 20, was bored and restless. He'd been granted a scholarship to the Art Institute in San Francisco and had taken college preparatory classes at San Francisco State College while still in high school, but any desire to complete his formal education was quickly supplanted by his interest in the arts, including the new sounds that were sucking in the nation's youth. Rock and roll was his generation's private language, and Marty spoke it well. He'd become hooked one evening when his sister threw a party, playing the same three rock and roll records -- by Elvis Presley, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis -- over and over again. Marty also loved the raw rhythm and blues sounds of the day: Ray Charles, Bobby "Blue" Bland.
Marty Balin: But I never wanted to be like [the black artists]. I wish I could, but I'm not. I remember at high school they had this thing etched in stone: "Of all the good things in the world a man can learn, is to learn himself." And all I ever wanted to do was to learn what music was inside me.
By the early '60s, most of the trailblazing rock and roll stars were already fading from view: Elvis was in the army, Chuck Berry in trouble with the law, Little Richard in the ministry and Buddy Holly dead in a plane crash. While rock certainly didn't die during this era, as one popular song later suggested, its public face, encouraged by governmental pressure and several other factors, did temporarily soften. Well-scrubbed, nonthreatening pinup boys -- Frankie Avalon, Fabian and a bunch of guys named Bobby -- replaced the wild boys.
Marty fell somewhere in between. He was too soulful and sexy to throw his lot in with the whitewashed camp, but his solid education, city street smarts and artistic background didn't allow him to engage in the sort of unfettered country-boy abandon that had marked the first wave of rockers.
Still, with his brooding demeanor, dark good looks and natural ability with a song, Marty saw no reason why he too couldn't be a singing star, and when an opportunity to record presented itself, he took it. While in L.A. accompanying a female acquaintance to a music publishing house, he found himself invited to sing background vocals on a session. There, at Gold Star Studios, Marty came to the attention of Jimmie Haskell, a young arranger who had made his name working on Ricky Nelson's hit records. Haskell took Marty under his wing, but nothing came for free. Marty's father first had to pay for the session, hiring the musicians, singers and recording crew, and then Haskell would record the aspiring performer.
Marty learned the three songs Haskell had asked him to learn and brought in one that he cowrote, "I Specialize in Love." When Marty arrived at the studio, he found a full orchestra and several of the top session musicians in Los Angeles there to accompany him, among them guitarists Glen Campbell and Barney Kessell, drummer Earl Palmer, keyboardist Jack Nitzsche, Milt Jackson on vibes and bassist Red Callender. The Blossoms added background vocals.
After the sessions were completed, Joe Buchwald, along with Marty's new manager, Renny T. Lamarre, worked out a deal with Challenge Records, a label owned b