St. John Green

History

The band emerged in 1967 from among students at Pasadena City College. Keyboard player Mike Baxter, decided to form a band with singer Vic Sabino. They found bass player and aspiring poet Ed Bissot through an audition, and added guitarist Bill Kirkland, also from Pasadena, Ca. and drummer Shel Scott, a resident of the San Fernando Valley, just North of L.A., to complete the band line-up. Bissot wanted to perform his own material under the pseudonym "St. John", and, as a compromise, the group name St. John Green was agreed. The band was managed by local entrepreneur Harry Snegg, and performed around the Los Angeles area playing songs written either by Bissot, or by Baxter and Sabino together.

Early in 1968 they met record producer and promoter Kim Fowley, who encouraged them to develop what he called the "Canyon Sound", unique to the local Topanga Canyon. The group performed alongside other local bands including Canned Heat and Spirit, and became the house band at the Topanga Canyon Corral. Interviewed in 2001, Fowley described singer and songwriter Ed Bissot as "tortured", saying:

"In between sets he threw up blood on a cot. He lay on the cot and he puked blood. He had bad lungs and he chain-smoked. Then he would go up on stage and give this performance and the all the groupies were madly in love with him, and then he’d go back to the cot and puke more blood....He was tragic and near death in the band, and as soon as the band stopped he got healthy and stopped smoking, I guess. Ed Bissot. I mean, what a genius. This fucking guy was Jim Morrison and Leon Russell... He had the stage presence of Morrison and a young Leon. The band played as tight as Vanilla Fudge, minus the fucking bubblegum. What a band! And dripping with darkness. Every heroin addict and gun dealer and radical black person from Venice to Malibu and Hollywood would all come to prowl and just worship this guy."

Baxter later said:

"[Kim Fowley] laid out to us what was essentially a plan to create and record a "new style of music"—"The Canyon" sound. We were to be his muse as he wove this "mystical tale about the Dark Shadows of the Canyon and the Mysterious Canyon people who had left the world behind to become one with nature" and all that "jazz"....Fowley used our talents as musicians to put his ideas into real musical arrangements. He would have pieces of songs he would take from one record or another to create his music. Interesting technique. Then I would sit down, learn the pieces and put them together as one to create the musical composition."

The band was signed by Mike Curb of MGM Records to the company's subsidiary label, Flick Disc, and the album was co-produced by Fowley and by Curb's 19-year-old protegé Michael Lloyd, a founder member of the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band who later became the producer of the Osmonds, Shaun Cassidy, and the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. Baxter said: "I always got the impression from Michael Lloyd that... there was a separate agenda that we were not privy to.... Our music was compromised... and our album twisted into a bizarre Kim Fowley project. In my heart, I knew it was nothing like the album I hoped it would be. We went forward in good faith, but I am sure the other guys felt disappointed as well." Fowley said of the album: "What a record! I have people come up to me and cry and stuff when I go to Europe. They cry and they start shaking and stuff. That’s the way people respond to that record... It’s a great record. There’s only a handful of records that I’ve made that are great."

Shortly after the album was released in 1968, Shel Scott and Bill Kirkland both left the band, and were briefly replaced by Bob Desimone (drums) and Brad Delavalley (guitar). However, musical differences between Bissot, Baxter and Sabino soon led to the band's disintegration and no further recordings were released, although Bissot retained the rights to the band name.

The album was reissued on CD by Relics Records in the UK in 2014.

Side one

Side two

Later activities

After St. John Green broke up, Baxter and Sabino formed a new band, Jumbo, with Delavalley (later replaced by Jim Pitman of Strawberry Alarm Clock), Richard Pisula (bass) and Neil Olson (drums). The band performed widely in California in 1969, before signing to Ode Records. They recorded an album with producer Lou Adler, but it was never released and the band split up in 1971. Baxter went on to play with Tim Rose, Bonnie Bramlett, R.B. Greaves, and others, and worked as a session musician and bandleader in Los Angeles and Hawaii in the 1970s and 1980s.

Kirkland formed a trio, William Saint James, with Anne Willcocks and Jim Wilson. They released a self-titled album on ABC-Dunhill Records in 1972.

Sabino retired from music after Jumbo, creating several successful salon businesses in both California and Arizona.

Scott went on to work with many name musicians thru out the 70's and 80's, releasing an album with his band Song in the early 70's. He is still performing today in venues in and around Southern California.

Bissot has continued to write and create his poetry and music, and headed several musical groups and studio projects both in L.A. and Las Vegas.