"We got all the friends that money can buy
So we never have to be alone
And we keep gettin' richer but we can't get our picture
On the cover of the Rollin' Stone"
Funny thing was, when they were featured on the cover of The Rolling Stone, it wasn't a photograph, it was a caricature. So close !!
The band got together in Union City, New Jersey (remember Blondie singing about 'Union City Blue' Vinyl Vault 21 July 2020). Not one of them is a doctor, and nobody is called Hook. Ray Sawyer lost an eye in a car accident so always wore an eyepatch and that was what inspired the name. Originally "Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show: Tonic for the Soul", they shortened the name to Dr. Hook in 1975. The story goes that whenever they were asked which one was Dr. Hook they pointed to the bus driver.
I can't talk about Dr. Hook without putting Shel Silverstein into the frame. He's so important he's almost an uncredited member of the band. In fact I could almost let Shel take over the whole post. Famous as a children's author and prolific songwriter he definitely had two sides to his genius. There was that part for the children and then a darker, biting side for the grown-ups, more often than not referencing the use of herbal tobacco! I could listen to him reciting 'The Smoke-Off' over and over again.
"Beware of being the roller when there's nothing left to roll".
Everyone knows something of his work. He did many so-called 'novelty' songs - 'A Boy Named Sue' made famous by Johnny Cash, 'Put Another Log On the Fire' done by Bill & Boyd, the Irish Rovers song 'The Unicorn'. But there was seriously good stuff in there too - Waylon Jennings or even better Kris Kristoffersons version of 'The Taker'. and my favourite, the absolutely gut-wrenchingly brilliant 'Ballad of Lucy Jordan' done by Hook in 1974 but brought to life in 1979 by Marianne Faithfull. (Vinyl Vault 7 June 2020).
In 1970 Dr. Hook had done demo tapes which were heard by the musical director of a planned movie where all the songs had been written by Shel. The band ended up doing two songs on the soundtrack, the movie didn't do well, but they got a recording contract out of it.
Shel was further responsible for kick-starting Dr. Hook by writing 10 of the 11 songs on their debut eponymous album in 1972 including their first hit 'Sylvia's Mother'. That song was pretty much autobiographical - Shel had tried to get in touch with an old flame called Sylvia but got her mother on the phone instead. In 1974 during a live performance in the Netherlands, Dr. Hook did a parody version of that song called 'Sylvia's Father'
"Sylvia's Father said, Sylvia's packing,
She's gonna be leaving today,
Sylvia's Father said, Sylvia's pregnant,
And you went and made her that way,
Sylvia's father said 'You Mother****er,
I swear I'll kill you someday' ..."
This featured album, 'Sloppy Seconds' was entirely written by Shel and contains not only 'The Cover of the Rolling Stone' but a couple of others of note. 'Queen of the Silver Dollar' is one I go back to and 'Freakin' at the Freakers Ball' pretty much sums up Shel's 'dark side' ...
"White ones, black ones, yellow ones, red ones
Necrophiliacs looking for dead ones
The greatest of the sadists and the masochists too
Screaming please hit me and I'll hit you" ...
probably politically incorrect these days.
The band continued to use some of Shel's songs on later albums - 'I Got Stoned and I Missed It', 'Everybody's Making It Big But Me' but their charting songs started to come from other directions. They totally went away from the 'novelty' stuff and in 1975 released the 1959 Sam Cooke classic 'Only Sixteen'.
One more Shel song they did release as a single was 'A Couple More Years'. It didn't do anything, but in 1986, Bob Dylan sang it in the movie "Hearts of Fire". At the end of the song he says to the girl he sang it to .. "I wrote that for you. Never finished it." which of course is bullsh*t, but there we are.
By the mid to late 70's the band had become darlings of the soft rock stations pumping out solid songs that continue to get airplay today. 'A Little Bit More', 'Sharing the Night Together', 'When You're in Love With a Beautiful Woman' and on and on.
The band broke up officially in 1985 but a couple of offshoots kept going for a while. Ray Sawyer (of eyepatch fame) toured as 'Ray Sawyer of Dr. Hook' and the other vocalist Dennis Locorriere did concerts as 'Voice of Dr. Hook'.
Sadly Ray Sawyer passed away in 2018 at the age of 81.
Whether you like the early fun stuff or the later lovey-dovey stuff, Dr. Hook has something in their library for everyone and even those who dismiss them as too light and silly still secretly sing along when their music comes on the radio.
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