Summer In The City by The Lovin’ Spoonful

AVIVID evocation of a time before air-con, Tinder and low-traffic neighbourhoods, The Lovin’s Spoonful’s sixth single was a huge hit in summer 1966 – and remains a go-to song every time the thermometer nudges into the eighties. It was conceived in the heart of Greenwich Village, where the band’s frontman John Sebastian and his songwriting brother Mark were born into a musical family (father John was a harmonica virtuoso and mother Jane worked at Carnegie Hall).

While John Jr was swept up in the Village folk revival of the early ’60s, running with the likes of Tim Hardin and Cass Elliot before forming The Lovin’ Spoonful in late 1964, his underage brother was forced to watch the action longingly from a 15th-floor window. However, after bashing out two albums in six months, it was to Mark that John turned when pulling together songs for the band’s third LP proper, Hums Of The Lovin’ Spoonful. Mark’s somewhat jejune ballad became the chorus of a colossal Frankenstein’s monster of a tune, with verses by John, a middle-eight by bassist Steve Boone, spiky guitar from the mercurial Zal Yanovsky, an unforgettable electric piano riff, a cacophony of car horns and a thunderous drum sound achieved by mic’ing up a stairwell.

“We were scattershot and we were trying anything that made sense,” recalls John. “We wanted to do a tune by Bascom Lamar Lunsford, the Minstrel Of Theend up in ‘Summer In The City’.”