“Artificial
flowers growing/in a hot and smokey breeze/Fluorescent sunshine
glowing/indicating names of factories..../But don't go away/Just
smile everyday/Wear love in your heart/Wear a flower in your hair and
you'll see.../Anywhere can be San Francisco (2x)/Anywhere can be San
Francisco Street/Come with me, and retreat/to my world and you'll
see...
There
may be no green grass growing/only hard black tarmac road/Where
you'll see people going/Through the world that they don't really
know/You don't have to roam/Just stay right at home/Wear love in your
heart/Wear a flower in your hair/And you'll see...Anywhere can be San
Francisco...
Sweet
music playing/in the dimly lit cafe/The steamed-up windows/where the
people's fingers play/writing names, playing games, writing
names...Anywhere can be San Francisco Street...”
Another
look at the Summer of Love's Ground Zero from across The Pond,
similar to that of “Let's Go To San Francisco”, this song proposes
the idea that, no matter how urban-unrenewed and depressing your home
burg might be at times, you have the cheering, fantastical option at
one's disposal of creating a tie-dyed, paisley and patchouli oasis.
Indeed,
San Francisco is all in the mind. (And keep in mind that, by the time
this song came out, the bloom was starting to fade off the actual
Haight Street rose.)
Produced
by Yank expat Shel Talmy, this hopeful, folky pop confection
- replete with 'ba-ba-ba' vocals - was a decided departure from the
usual brash soundscapes he created for the early Who and Kinks.
Steven
Lancaster was the nom
de rocque
for one Len Moseley, who would go on to a similarly sunshiny
psych-pop vocal group called Wild Silk, releasing a sole, rather charming single, "Toymaker", in 1969. Moseley also wrote the
song “The Night Before” for Lee Hazlewood.
Listen
to “San Francisco Street” here:
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