I haven't done one of these in a while. This installment brings you "Never My Love" performed by The Association, a group I kinda liked back then although I knew absolutely nothing about them. Didn't know their names, didn't know where they came from…I don't think I even knew how many guys were in the group. Thanks to Wikipedia, I now know there were six of them, the band was from California and that the membership changed a lot over the years.
"Never My Love" came out in 1967 when the band members consisted of Terry Kirkman, Russ Giguere, Brian Cole, Ted Bluechel Jr., Jim Yester and Larry Ramos. This appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show was December 8, 1968 when, says Wikipedia, they'd added Jules Alexander to the group. But there are still six guys in the video so your guess is as good as mine, possibly better.
Here's a mystery that interests me more. I was in high school at the time this song was popular and there was a student talent show in which a young lady I knew from Algebra was going to sing it. At one of the rehearsals, the faculty advisor supervising the show declared that three songs — this one, "Young Girl" (recorded by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap) and "Light My Fire" (by The Doors, of course) had lyrics that were "too suggestive."
I worked on the show and I was the one who argued, ever-so-politely, that every kid in the audience knew these lyrics and heard them, ad nauseum, on the radio. What was the harm of singing them in the school auditorium? It was a solid argument but this faculty advisor was one of those "I am always right" types and he insisted that certain lines be laundered or the songs had to be cut.
It fell to me to rewrite the lyrics in question. The changes were approved by him at the last rehearsal…and then when the actual show was performed in front of the audience, all the singers (as planned) went back to the original lyrics. He said nothing. No one complained. The matter was forgotten. And the same situation would play out years later when I argued — again, ever so politely — with Standards and Practices people (i.e., censors) on TV shows I worked on. It was one of the more valuable lessons I learned in high school.
But what puzzles me now is what did he make us change in this song? I don't recall and the lyrics on the Sullivan show are exactly the same as on the record. I don't hear anything more salacious in them than we heard in half of the most popular tunes of the day. It just sounds to me like two people madly in love and the line about "spend your whole life with me" even suggested marriage to most people back in 1967, not recreational sex. Maybe he objected to a female singing that line because ladies weren't supposed to ask that of men back then. See if you can figure it out…