HOTTER THAN A MATCH HEAD

HOTTER THAN A MATCH HEAD           STEVE BOONE
Posted:  Nov. 26, 2014

On October 15, 1967, bass player Steve Boone took the Ed Sullivan Show stage for the final time, with his band The Lovin’ Spoonful. Since forming in a Greenwich Village hotel in early 1965, Boone and his bandmates had released an astounding nine Top 20 singles, the first seven of which hit the Billboard Top 10, including the iconic Boone co-writes “Summer in the City” and “You Didn’t Have to Be So Nice.”

Little did Steve Boone know that the path of his life and career would soon take a turn for the bizarre, one that would eventually find him looking at the world through the bars of a jail cell. From captaining a seaworthy enterprise to smuggle marijuana into the U.S. from Colombia, to a period of addiction, to the successful reformation of the band he’d helped made famous, Hotter Than a Match Head tells the story of Boone’s personal journey along with that of one of the most important and enduring groups of the 1960s. 

HUBBY'S REVIEW:

Steve Boone, was the bass player for the 60’s band the LOVIN SPOONFUL. The book starts off with his back ground of growing up as a son of a military son moving around and how when his brother got into playing guitar that he also took a liking to it as well. He moves on to joining a few bands nothing serious, but he also learned how to play bass because one of the bands needed a bass player. After high school he took off to Europe and traveled and meet some people who were really into the engineering of cars, but that was going nowhere and came back to the States, New York City, in the Soho area and was staying with some friends and took up playing the bass again. He was called by a friend to come down and listen to this new band, once he got there he heard a sound that was different and then John Sebastian asked him to sit in with them because they did not have a regular bass player. After playing and then going back to their apartment they asked him to join their band which he jumped at right away. “Saying he saw something he John Sebastian,” that at up to that time he did not see in any other musician. The music and writing for him was or seemed easy or natural and he was not copying anyone else and he also helped them to write as well. The band wrote all their own music and their first hit was in 65 with “Do you believe in magic”, they had four more hits before their #1 “Summer time in the city”, in 66. They had seven consecutive top ten, from their first album to when John Sebastian, left the band to go solo. The book goes into the height of their popularity with arguing with other groups as to the order of the show, how the hatred in the South while touring with the Supremes, they saw it firsthand. He goes into how they were looked at being the group to star in the T.V. show the Monkees, but by then the band was not together and everything fell through. He also goes into detail about his drug problem and drug smuggling. That at one time when Boone and Yanovsky, were busted were forced to work with drug agents so Yanovsky would not be deported. Then later when he was sailing how he was smuggling drugs and if he got caught he would have made some of these other rock star cases look like small potatoes. A very honest book and look into a band from the 60’s that had good music, not just their hits but that is what they are remembered for. A good read. I got this book from net galley.