Post-Punk Monk

When I noticed that the 5 year anniversary of Sweet Pea Atkinson‘s death was coming up, I made a note to write about it because the sad truth was that when Sweetpea died in 2020, in the midst of the Pandemic lockdown, it was what should have been a seismic event for me yet was completely off my cultural radar. I only found out about it a few years ago, by chance!

When I first heard Was (Not Was) in 1981 on college radio, the two tracks that WPRK-FM played were “Tell Me That I’m Dreaming” and “Out Come The Freaks.” These were Punk/Funk anarcho-bombs lobbed into the music scene by David and Don Was. Like Frank Zappa crossed with James Brown. Only great! But the significant fact was that those were tracks where Sir Harry Bowens was the lead vocalist. Crucially, I didn’t actually hear Sweet Pea until I saw the video for “Knocked Down, Made Small [Treated Like A Rubber Ball”] on MTV two years later! Where the sight and sound of him hit like a ton of bricks!

Who was that guy all pimped out in a suit and fedora and singing like a vintage Soul Shouter?! The second coming of Otis Redding? He had a pin sharp visual presence, sure! But he also had a voice like he gargled with broken glass. Rough, ragged, and ready to roar at a moment’s notice. I thought that they didn’t make singers like this any more. Too textural for the frictionless, corporate music scene. I was very intrigued by this guy but I didn’t run across many copies of “Born To Laugh At Tornadoes,” to my severe detriment. In retrospect, it was the point where I really should have jumped on the Was (Not Was) bandwagon with all due haste. But I’m not always that wise.

It remained until the interminable five year wait for the third Was (Not Was) album that I finally took the bait and ran with it. Say what you will about the merits [or demerits] of a catchy Pop hit, but the hit single “Walk The Dinosaur” was the fulcrum by which a nation of Was (Not Was) fans were probably created. The chanted nonsense hook was mental flypaper, and the interplay between Sweet Pea and Sir Harry duetting on lead vocals was a perfect précis of the Was (Not Was) methodology. Throw Funk, Soul, and Rock into a blender. Add the anarchic beat poetry sensibilities of lyricist David Was. Then clamp down tightly on the lid and shake. Then with their secret weapons of Sweet Pea and Sir Harry to sing the resulting songs. Those two were like a pile of bricks wrapped in silk! And we were served a bracing cocktail of diverse elements gelling into a powerful gestalt.

After hearing the full spectrum of the band on “What Up Dog?” I became a collector right then and there. I hoovered up every Was (Not Was) release from 1981 to the present in my sights. The material on that album ran the gamut from smooth to psychotic. I can only imagine some people liking “Walk The Dinosaur” and taking an chance on that album only to be repelled by the shall we say “tonal range” of the material. But I would not be one of those people! For me this was obviously one of the most intelligent and talented bands I’d ever heard.

And after hearing all of their albums, I became entranced with the famously rusty pipes of Sweet Pea! The man was an utter throwback to a more distant, wilder, music era miraculously brought into the realm of synthesizers and drum machines. I didn’t know how he happened, but I was certainly glad that he was here with us now! But who was the man? How did he come to be?

Hilliard “Sweet Pea” Atkinson was conceived in the dying days of the Second World War, and was born in Oberlin, Ohio, just a few weeks following VJ Day on September 20th, 1945. He moved westward to Detroit and eventually found employment on the Chrysler assembly line by the mid 70s. It was with a band formed with other workers, called Hi Energy, they his path crossed most memorably with Don Was [née Fagenson]. It was the middle of the night where Don Was was taking advantage of off-peak time at a local studio, prior to the formation of Was (Not Was). Don walked out of the small studio and saw other musicians in the hallway but couldn’t tear his eyes off of Sweet Pea. That’s because the man was decked out in a completely orange ensemble. Orange suit, orange shoes, orange socks. “The guy looked like he was on fire in this studio at 3 a.m.” quipped Was years later.

The garrulous Atkinson quickly ingratiated himself with Don that night and later on, Was found himself at the end of his tether, and called his childhood friend David Weiss to come back to Detroit and help save him from a life of incipient crime by forming a band together. At that point, when assembling the band and making a plan of attack, the call went out to Atkinson as both Don and David were in awe of this guy who could sing like Otis Redding yet he also looked like a cutthroat pimp.

Sweet Pea may have come by his rep honestly. His shadowy background prior to singing in Was (Not Was) hinted at various stints of performing less than savory activities leading up to this point in his life. Nevertheless, David and Don were determined to showcase this powerful singer who was probably born a decade to late to reap the peak of the Soul movement to which he always had strong ties. David has said that “Sweet Pea was the kind of singer I wanted to be growing up in Motown.” That’s not to say that it was smooth sailing once the good ship Was (Not Was) launched.

When the band put pen to “Out Come the Freaks,” their defining early opus, Sweet Pea took one look at that finished song and said “I’m not singing that ****!” And he left the studio and climbed into his Caddy and took off; giving an iron-clad veto so that no-one could claim any confusion. When he saw that the breakout hit went to Sir Harry Bowens to sing instead, he learned to be a little more flexible with the decidedly offbeat material he could be asked to sing within the borders of Was (Not Was). Even as he would rasp to the Brothers Was “why can’t you write me some bedroom songs?”

As history bears witness, that didn’t quite happen for Sweet Pea. But he did get the focus of attention with the follow up to “Was (Not Was) being his 1982 solo album “Don’t Walk Away” where perhaps slightly less quirky Was penned originals sat next to a catholic selection of cover material ranging from Bacharach + David to Eddie Rabbit and General Johnson from Chariman Of The Board. I only managed to find a copy of this on LP two years ago and it has been near the top of my listening list ever since.

The next album that Was (Not Was) made was the mind-meltingly eclectic “Born To Laugh At Tornadoes” on Geffen Records from 1983. While Sweet Pea and Sir Harry held court, the guests on that album ranged from Ozzy Osbourne [on a synthpop track!] to the Brothers Was childhood friend Doug Fieger of The Knack, and not forgetting The Velvet Fog™ himself, Mr. Mel Tormé! As released on Geffen Records in ’83, following a regime change, the man who found himself charge of the band’s A+R did not know what to do with the band after they were signed. So the critically lauded opus failed to connect with any sales and the band were cut free.

But their next label, Fontana Records, did. Label head David Bates managed to get the band into a space where they recorded material for over a year before moving on it in release. The time spent in the design stage was very productive. “Spy In The House Of Love” almost scraped into the UK Top 50, and then the band had a Top 10 UK hit with “Walk The Dinosaur” in 1987. They managed to replicate the feat in America two years later after “What Up Dog?” was licensed for The States on Chrysalis. Thankfully, in the wake of the band cracking the US Top 10, Geffen cashed in by re-issuing “Born To Laugh At Tornadoes” on the silver disc and I bought that immediately as I had been a huge fan of “What Up Dog.” Indeed. That album is my pick for favorite of 1988.

Meanwhile, Sweet Pea got in the Top 20 once more with the awesome “Spy In The House of Love” single. I had fond memories of seeing the band live on the burgeoning crop of talk shows sprouting up on the US airwaves on the mid-late 80s like mushrooms. I tried to tape them all! I really need to hit those stored Superßeta/S-VHS tapes and make if not a DVD at least capture the smoking hot audio of these live TV performances for a CD-R. What I did not have were fond memories of seeing the band live in front of my face.

The first time they hit Orlando on the “What Up Dog?” tour, they were playing a show at the night club JJ Whispers. Alas, none of my friends were interested in going. “I don’t like rap music,” I heard in one response! I really should have made it happen but it exists as the second biggest music regret of my young life, following missing Ultravox almost a decade prior. Then the second time that band played in Orlando [on the same album tour – different leg] was as part of the lineup on the Club MTV tour. But they were sharing the stage with Information Society, Lisa Lisa + Cult Jam, Tone Loc, Paula Abdul, and Milli Vanilli and that would have been the Orlando Arena stage so I would not have had a good time.

By that time that Don Was’ production career was starting to take off, first with the B-52’s and then with Bonnie Raitt, and this caused friction within the Was (Not Was) mothership where there was no time for him to make their very own records [which by that point had their biggest audience] on his tight schedule. Following the somewhat sketchy “Are You Okay?” where there was only three weeks to record it earmarked in Don’s planner, the band seemed to evaporate as groups like The Rolling Stones beckoned. Fine for Don Was but misery for any Was (Not Was) fans hanging on for more of that spicy Sweet Pea hot sauce in their musical diets.

Fortunately, where Don would hang out his shingle, both Sweet Pea and Harry Bowens would often follow, and Atkinson managed to segue around 1990 into a backing vocal career of fine fettle. With such a dominant voice, he was able to negotiate a way to effectively weave his voice into the background of artists like Bonnie Raitt, Iggy Pop, Brian Wilson, and countless others in Don Was’ CV. Sweet Pea and Was (Not Was) guitarist Randy Jacobs formed their own splinter band in The Boneshakers. I really need their first two albums that featured Sweet Pea on vocals. Concurrent with the first Boneshakers album was the Orquestra Was project where Don Was convened a crew to record a mixture of his own songs [sans David Was input] with those of Hank Williams in a Jazz context that was a radical shift from anything we’d heard previously by either Don or Sweet Pea.

Following that last Was (Not Was) album, Don Was found himself picked to head the prestigious Blue Note label in 2012 and he made sure a berth was there for Sweet Pea to record his second solo album following decades of mostly session work for others. 2017 saw the “Get What You Deserve” album release and it stands as the final word in Sweet Pea’s career. I have been pining away for a copy of this but I’ve never managed to find one. I had better order the CD directly from the label before it’s out of print and I’m forced to pay three figures if I want one.

Sweet Pea Atkinson was a man not quite in synch with his own time. A tad late to the 60s Soul explosion. And far too rough an approach for the planed-down eighties, let’s be thankful that he managed to spend most of his life singing, which was the man’s one true calling. The grit he brought to the mic was immeasurable. It still blows my mind to this day that he shared a stage with such featherweight piffle as Paula Abdul, not to mention the infamous Milli Vanilli! Whose hard drive malfunctioned famously on that selfsame Club MTV tour. If they had the self awareness, they surely would have been mortified to follow him onstage.

He died of a heart attack [thankfully not Covid-related] five years ago on this day at the too young age of 74. With his chops, I would have loved to have to seen him carry on swaggering and growling into his late 80s. And you know he could have gotten away with it. When I get some free hours I really need to get that first solo album REVO-ified [I don’t think that’s actually a word…] into a CD-R and report back with my findings. But tonight you should pull your favorite Was (Not Was) album of choice, and let the music flow. We’ve lost a giant five years ago, but his fine works are still there to savor moving forward.

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