7 and 7 Is

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"7 and 7 Is"
File:Sevenandsevenis45.jpg
Single by Love
from the album Da Capo
B-side"No. Fourteen"
ReleasedJuly 1966
Recorded
  • June 17 & 20, 1966
  • Sunset Sound Recorders, Hollywood
Genre
Length2:15
LabelElektra
Songwriter(s)Arthur Lee
Producer(s)Jac Holzman
Love singles chronology
"My Little Red Book"
(1966) 		"7 and 7 Is"
(1966) 		"Stephanie Knows Who"
(1966)

"7 and 7 Is" is a song written by Arthur Lee and recorded by his band Love on June 17 and 20, 1966, at Sunset Sound Recorders in Hollywood.[3] It was produced by Jac Holzman and engineered by Bruce Botnick.

The song was released as the A-side of Elektra single 45605 in July, 1966. The B-side was "No. Fourteen", an outtake from the band's earlier recordings. "7 and 7 Is" made the Billboard Pop Singles chart on July 30, 1966, peaking at number 33 during a ten-week chart run and becoming the band's highest-charting hit single and only Top 40 hit.[4] The recording also featured on the band's second album, Da Capo.

Writing and recording[edit]

The song drew inspiration from a high school sweetheart of Lee, Anita "Pretty" Billings,[5] who shared his birthday, March 7. It also describes Lee's frustration at teenage life—the reference to "in my lonely room I'd sit, my mind in an ice cream cone" being to wearing (in reality or metaphorically) a dunce's cap.[6] Describing how the song came to him, Lee stated: "I was living on Sunset and woke up early one morning. The whole band was asleep. I went in the bathroom, and I wrote those words. My songs used to come to me just before dawn, I would hear them in dreams, but if I didn't get up and write them down, or if I didn't have a tape recorder to hum into, I was through. If I took for granted that I could remember it the next day—boink, it was gone."[7]

It took a great deal of work to record, with Love's drummer, Alban "Snoopy" Pfisterer, being challenged with its frantic demands after 30 takes or so, and being replaced on drums, intermittently, by Lee himself. In an interview for John Einarson's book Forever Changes, lead guitarist Johnny Echols credits the drumming on the released record to Pfisterer.[8] In a 1989 interview, Arthur Lee stated that he himself taught Pfisterer how to play the part, and that the final record featured Pfisterer. In what has been described as a "flirtation" with musique concrète,[9] the song climaxes in an apocalyptic explosion—the supposed sound of an atom bomb—before a peaceful conclusion, in a blues form, which then fades out.[6] Although many listeners thought that the explosion at the end of the song was a reverb unit being kicked or dropped, it was (according to the engineer Bruce Botnick), in actuality, taken from a sound effects record.[10] He speculated that it was a recording of a gunshot slowed down.[10] For live performances, the explosion was reproduced by kicking a reverb unit.

Music critic Robert Christgau called the song "a perfect rocker".[11] Cash Box described the song as a "pulsating, rhythmic extremely danceable blueser with a clever gimmick wind-up."[12]

Covers[edit]

Described as garage rock[1] and proto-punk,[2] the song was later covered by numerous bands, most notably the Ramones, Alice Cooper, The Electric Prunes, Billy Bragg, The Sidewinders, The Fuzztones, Rush, Robert Plant, Alice Bag and Deep Purple, as well as a re-recording by Lee himself. The song was also featured in the TV series Entourage in season 5 episode 1 during the closing credits.[13]

Former Chemlab vocalist Jared Louche covered "7 and 7 Is" with The Aliens for his 1999 solo debut Covergirl.[14]

Popular culture[edit]

References[edit]

Citations[edit]

  1. ^ a b Unterberger, Richie (2014). Jingle Jangle Morning: Folk-Rock in the 1960s. BookBaby. ISBN 978-0-9915892-1-0.
  2. ^ a b Schinder, S. & Schwartz, A. (2008). Icons of Rock. ABC-CLIO. p. 263. ISBN 9780313338465.
  3. ^ "Love - Da Capo". Discogs.com. Retrieved 25 April 2019.
  4. ^ Whitburn, Joel (2003). Top Pop Singles 1955-2002 (1st ed.). Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin: Record Research Inc. p. 424. ISBN 0-89820-155-1.
  5. ^ Steven Roby & Brad Schreiber, Becoming Jimi Hendrix: From Southern Crossroads to Psychedelic London, Da Capo Press, 2010, pp. 105-106
  6. ^ a b Hoskyns 2001, pp. 47–49.
  7. ^ Gallo, Phil – Booklet included with Love Story 1966-1972, Rhino Records R2 73500 (1995), p. 15
  8. ^ Einarson 2010, p. 117.
  9. ^ Edwin Pouncey, "Rock Concrete", Undercurrents: The Hidden Wiring of Modern Music, Bloomsbury, 2002, p. 157
  10. ^ a b Einarson 2010, p. 118.
  11. ^ Christgau, R. (June 1967). "Columns". Esquire. Retrieved 2012-07-06.
  12. ^ "CashBox Record Reviews" (PDF). Cash Box. July 16, 1966. p. 36. Retrieved 2022-01-12.
  13. ^ "Informationen zum Thema songdetective". Songdetective.com. Retrieved 25 April 2019.
  14. ^ Steininger, Alex (July 30, 2020). "Jared Louche and the Aliens: Covergirl". In Music We Trust (26). Retrieved July 30, 2020.
  15. ^ Focus Features (2019-04-01), THE DEAD DON'T DIE - Official Trailer [HD] - In Theaters June 14, archived from the original on 2021-12-19, retrieved 2019-06-11
  16. ^ Knockout City: Official Reveal Trailer, 2021-02-17, archived from the original on 2021-12-19, retrieved 2021-07-12

Sources[edit]

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