After forming in San Francisco in 1965, the Flamin’ Groovies became one of the premiere bands within that city’s legendary Haight-Ashbury music scene. In particular, their third album, Teenage Head (released in 1971) established them as masters of blues-infused rock. As that decade progressed, they evolved into power pop pioneers; their 1976 single “Shake Some Action” is widely regarded as a classic in that genre. They remain celebrated for their influence on alternative rock, and they continue to tour around the world. Earlier this month, Liberation Hall Records reissued the group’s classic 1979 album Jumpin’ in the Night on purple vinyl. Calling from his home in San Francisco, guitarist and longtime leader Cyril Jordan tells The Big Takeover about what’s kept him so loyal to this band, his earliest days as a musician, and what he thinks of the legacy he’s created (so far).
You’ve been through a lot of ups and downs with Flamin’ Groovies through the decades. What’s inspired you to keep on persevering?
CYRIL JORDAN: The thing is, destiny steps in and you’ve got to step up. I realized that a long time ago. It happened again in 2019 when [lead vocalist] Roy Loney collapsed at the airport. We were going to do a Teenage Head tour in Europe, and fifteen minutes before we got on the plane, Roy collapsed. So all the sudden, we were on our way to Europe without a lead singer. So I stepped up and became the lead singer. We had a real long sound check when we got to Sweden because we were gigging that night. So we had a 10 hour sound check and revamped the set, and I had to learn lyrics to all of these songs, and it was just a nightmare. But we pulled it off and we did the tour.
How did you know that you should be in this business at all, given that can be so difficult?
CYRIL JORDAN: If I had known then what I know now, I probably wouldn’t have done it, because it is a really, really difficult road. But we were all very young when this happened. I was seventeen when we cut our first record. So it’s evolution. You join a band and you start gigging, and pretty soon you’ve got a record. We cut our first record, Sneakers [in 1968], and we pressed up 1,500 copies. Within five weeks, we sold them and pressed up another 1,500, and those went pretty fast, too. Then we did another 1,500. So by the time Epic Records approached us, we had sold over 4,000 records in the Bay Area. A major label looks at that and goes, ‘Well, we could probably sell that amount in every city in America.” So that’s when they get interested in giving you a record deal. If you don’t get to that point where a major label recognizes you, then you’re kind of in no man’s land. But if they do, it’s part of the evolutionary process of being in a band. And so before you know it, you find yourself in it. And we came from the Haight-Ashbury music scene, so it was more of a lifestyle than a career choice.
What made you pick up a guitar in the first place?
CYRIL JORDAN: I fell in love with the sound of the electric guitar around 1959. I had a ukulele, and I was just a little kid. And all of a sudden, the surf instrumental music scene started with songs like “Wipeout” and “Pipeline” and all these other songs. I just fell in love with the electric guitar. Then The Beach Boys came out with “Little Deuce Coupe” in 1962. That was it. I got an acoustic guitar for my birthday. Real cheapo. I started teaching myself how to play. All of the sudden one day, must have been about a week after John Kennedy was assassinated, I’m on my way home from a Sea Scout meeting – I was in Sea Scouts at the time – and I had my transistor radio with me. I’m walking up the hill towards my house and I turned the radio on and I hear these guys screaming “I can’t hide!” And I stopped dead in my tracks. I find out they’re called The Beatles. I go down to the record store the next day and there’s three 45s, so I come home with [those], and I’m freaking out. So I was pretty much on the ground floor here on the West Coast because we didn’t get to see them until the next year in February, on The Ed Sullivan Show. After that, the whole British invasion began. It was like a giant vacuum cleaner and I just got sucked in.
When you formed your own band, how did you decide what direction your own music should take?
CYRIL JORDAN: Back then, the local bands were basically garage bands, because we were all rehearsing in our parents’ garages. Everybody was playing the same stuff, so it was very easy to start up a band because everybody knew those songs. So when you got together with people, you were just doing a jam, and you would play those songs. We were basically a cover band when we started, like all the bands were.
Do you remember the first time that you wrote an original song and realized you had that talent?
CYRIL JORDAN: It happened over a long period of time. It was a slow process. Roy started writing songs and I started arranging them for him, and that evolved to the point where we both began writing together.
Your band may be best known for your power pop phase. What made you shift to playing that genre?
CYRIL JORDAN: Roy left the band [in 1971], and our new lead singer, Chris Wilson, came in. And Chris and I could harmonize together really well, so we became more of a vocalist band, as opposed to a band that has a lead singer.
And now you have songs like “Shake Some Action” that have really stood the test of time…
CYRIL JORDAN: I still can’t figure that out. Why that song? The motivator for writing that song was, we had lost our lead singer, Roy, who was the main writer. I was the co-writer. So now I’m going to be the writer. And we had lost our last record deal right after Roy left, so I wanted to get another record deal. So I figured, I’m going to write a killer song and make a demo of it and then try to get a record deal. I was working on three different songs for about three months. And one day, I took all the ideas for these three different songs and I turned them into one song, and that became “Shake Some Action.”
What do you think as you look back on your career overall – your legacy so far?
CYRIL JORDAN: It’s weird. It’s like gum on my shoe: I can’t get it off. I mean, the Flamin’ Groovies went on for 27 years, from ’66 to ’91, and then we broke up. I didn’t write songs for about five years. I didn’t play the guitar. I didn’t listen to records. I started painting on canvas. I became an artist, making money selling my paintings. And one day I get a letter in the mail from Paramount Studios. A lady director was making a movie, and she wanted to use “Shake Some Action.” So we did the deal. Chris and I get $15,000 each as the writers for the song. So here I am, no group, no record label, and I’m making more money than I ever made. And then the movie is this big teenage hit called Clueless. We would have made thirty grand each had they used our version of it, but they used Cracker’s version. So we only got publishing, we didn’t get performance rights. So I get sucked back into the biz. Like a vacuum cleaner. [laughs] That’s what’s so weird about destiny. You think you’re in charge of your future, and then stuff like this happens and you get sucked back into what you used to do. And it’s been that way ever since.
